Guest Blog from Charlotte – Calderdale Mumbler
Looking for ways to entertain the kids at home over Easter? If you want something a bit different from the usual egg hunt, these Mumbler tried-and-tested family games are sure to get the good times rolling!
1. Treasure Hunt – Kids love treasure hunts and following clues. If you’re feeling extra creative, turn your clues into riddles. You could even hide them inside plastic eggs. You can find ideas for clues below.
2. Glow in the dark Egg Hunt – For an egg hunt with a twist, do it in the dark! Take a fillable plastic egg and pop an LED tea light inside to light it up. Then, pull the curtains, turn off the lights and hide lots of them around the house. If you have older kids to entertain, why not do it in the garden after dark?
3. Egg Decoration – A true classic, there are so many ways to decorate your eggs. We love gently shaking ours in a container filled with rice and food colouring. Then, you can stick on feathers and sequins and even pom poms. You can find plenty of other ideas for inspiration here.
4. Egg and Spoon Race – This old school classic always goes down well. If you don’t want to waste more eggs, small water balloons are a great alternative.
5. Egg Rolling – There are lots of fun ways you can do an egg roll and lots of families have their own traditions. Mark a start line at the top of the hill (or a slide in the garden if you have one) and a finish line at the bottom. Each contestant decorates a hard boiled egg so that it’s easily recognisable and then lines up at the start. The aim is to roll your egg down the hill without it breaking. The winner is the first one to reach the bottom of the hill without breaking (or the egg which lands the furthest from the slide). If you don’t have a hill, get the contestants to roll their egg with a spoon, stick or even their nose…just not their hands.
6. Egg Tapping/ Egg Dump – This game is known by lots of different names, but they’re all good fun! Participants will all need a hard boiled egg. Then, in a series of rounds, two players must ‘fight to the end’ by repeatedly knocking the pointed ends of their eggs together, until one of the eggs cracks. When your egg cracks, you’re out! The overall winner is the one whose egg succeeds in breaking the greatest number of other eggs. You can make it more fun by decorating your egg, giving it a name and even making up your own entry music, as your egg enters the ring like a champion boxer!
7. Egg Toss – * warning – this can get very messy!* In this game, two people stand opposite each other and throw an egg back and forth. Step a bit further back after each throw and the person who let’s the egg drop and crack is the loser! Another one that is best to play outside. It can be a bit less messy to use water balloons instead🙂
8. Guess how many eggs are in the jar – This does run the risk of having lots of chocolate in the jar (and therefore the temptation to eat it all!, but you don’t just have to fill it with chocolate eggs; you could put some bigger polystyrene eggs or plastic eggs in there too.
9. Tiny Egg Pick up Game – Fill a bowl with jelly beans. Each player must use a straw to suck up as many beans as possible in 60 seconds. To shake it up a bit, try chopsticks instead of straws.
10. Pin the Tail on the Easter bunny – Who needs a donkey when you’ve got a rabbit and a cotton wool tail?
11. Bunny Race – A twist on the sack race. Give each person a pair of bunny ears and a pillowcase and they’re all set!
12. Hungry Bunny Bean Bag Toss – Draw a rabbit on a large piece of cardboard then cut out a mouth big enough so that beanbags can be thrown through it. If you don’t have beanbags, rolled up socks are good alternatives!
13. Ten Pin Bunny Bowling – Take a standard set of children’s plastics skittles, draw a rabbit’s face and whiskers on the front of each and add cardboard ears and a cotton wool tail. If you don’t have skittles you can always use paper cups and draw a bunny face on them.
14. Pass the Easter Carrot – Players must pass the Easter carrot (an orange sausage-shaped balloon) between their legs from one person to the other without using their hands. Just don’t drop the carrot!
15. Easter Egg Piñata
-Fill a deflated balloon with as many jelly beans or Smarties as possible, then blow it up so that the sweets rattle around inside.
-Dip strips of newspaper into PVA glue and stick them to the balloon (covering the whole thing so there are no holes), then set aside to dry.
-Once it’s dry and hard, stick a pin through it and pop the balloon. It’s then ready to decorate in any way you want.
-Attach a tie, hang it up, and let the kids get to work!
Thanks so much to our guest blogger Charlotte. If you have family or friends in Calderdale be sure to let them know about the Calderdale Mumbler site.
There’s plenty on Gateshead Mumbler to help keep little ones (and big ones!) busy, check here for more ideas and info for playgroups, classes and fun days out from tots to teens!
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