Egg hunts normally involve lots of delicious, enticing candy. Little plastic eggs filled with shiny, colorful jelly beans, M&Ms, and more. (Rarely have I seen an event where the children hunted actual, you know, EGGS.)
If you’ve been here for any time at all, you have figured out that I’m really not a fan of filling kids full of sugar at every turn. That’s partly because a modest slice of cake turns my kid into a hyperactive, insomniac zombie. It also just seems to me that candy and other sweets used to be special to me precisely because I didn’t have them all the time. Serving candy and cake and cookies seems to be part of the overly-hyped, marketing culture that keeps getting pushed on us. It sets the bar so high in every day life that you have trouble topping it for special occasions. Let’s not do that, mmmkay?
Our tradition is to host an egg hunt playdate for our friends with NO candy at all. (Well, it started out as “not much” candy. That year, someone put marshmallows in the eggs. It rained, so we had to have the hunt indoors and we missed one. And we didn’t KNOW we missed one until the ants found it. YEAH THAT WAS GROSS.) Never hosted an egg hunt before? Never fear, it’s fun and easy!
Candy Free Egg Hunts
The whole “no candy” thing started when my big guy was a toddler. Toddlers look mighty cute in the Egg Hunt pictures, but they haven’t had enough experience to understand how an egg hunt works. Nor do they need candy- they are excited just to see their friends. It’s typical for them to either take the same egg in and out of the basket, or to pick up one egg for each hand and stop.
To make it a little enticing for them, there are plenty of alternative egg filler ideas available. With the exception of the year we filled each egg with a tiny dinosaur, Os and goldfish crackers are our staple fill item. (Psst! Food free options make the allergy moms VERY happy. If you have food allergies in your circle of friends, consider going totally food free when you fill, and confining all treats to a single area. The moms will thank you.)
Offer the little guys easy pickings and plenty of encouragement to pick up the eggs- and have those cameras ready.
Fun for Mixed Age Groups
I have a big kid and a toddler. This year, I had my big kid help hide the eggs for the little guys, and the littles did their hunt first. Then we hid a second batch of eggs for the big kids. With a bigger group of “big” kids, my favorite strategy is either to color-code the eggs (Big kids hunt red and blue eggs, the rest are for the littles, for example.) or to give the big kids an assignment. Base it on the number and age of the kids playing and how many eggs you have- this year, the big kids had to bring me six eggs, two of them the big size, and at least four different colors. They loved it! They were so proud of themselves when they came and showed me their six eggs. It never crossed their minds to see who could get the most eggs.
There is another egg hunt strategy that is really cool because it lets you be pretty lazy- you can hide empty eggs. At least for the big kids. (See remarks above about normal toddler behavior at an egg hunt.) Create a “goodie bag” for each kid (I used sidewalk chalk shaped like eggs, matchbox cars, pencils, glow sticks, and a few other inexpensive, non-candy goodies) that they get when they collect one of each color. Want to make it even less competitive? Tell them they can have it when ALL the big kids have one egg of each color.
You will have to work hard to get good pix of these guys at work- they typically dart around faster than a dragonfly humming over a pond in the summer sun. But the smiles on their faces will be something you won’t forget in a hurry.
Looking for more ideas for your celebration? Check out our Traditions Pinterest board:
Follow Meghan Gray’s board Traditions on Pinterest.
