Early Easter Egg Hunt

I know, I know, it’s not strictly speaking Easter yet, but our friend Annie was making a flying visit so we decided to egg hunt early because:

1. The kids love Annie and would appreciate hunting with her
2. Annie is fabulously creative and would help with clues
3. We could all eat chocolate
4. Lots of fun for two children and three adults!

I asked Annie if she would help design the hunt (basically Annie compiled the whole thing while I did boring stuff like telling her how many eggs we had, ironing, tidying up breakfast and suggesting a few lyrical clues, Steve was out running and the kids were playing and being shooed away from Annie’s cunning clue compiling!)

This clue reads:

I'm long, thin and green
Near me an egg will be seen

 We made the children wait to build up the sense of anticipation and to build up a stash of clues (visual for the 5 year old (maps with crosses) and written for the 7 year old). Steve and Annie also had to actually hide the eggs.

In Spain you can buy pre-boiled eggs (I know, it’s bizarre!) Not only are they boiled but also beautifully brightly coloured, I suppose so that if you store them in the same place as your other eggs you can tell the difference between your cooked and uncooked ones! We put some of these boiled eggs on the hunt too. We thought it would be entertaining to see the kids finding boiled eggs as well as chocolate ones, surprisingly, they found them equally exciting!
 

This photo shows Owain, having solved the "long, thin and green" clue, finding the egg hidden in the hose pipe..


Here are some of the clues we made up for the kids:
In the plants a treat you’ll find
Mint’s the hint for where I hide

They sorted that one fairly easily...
Another was:
Look to where you have a sleep
There’s treasure there you’ll want to keep

This is our very own stripy pink riding hood, replete with treasure and clues

Some of the clues were a bit too easy for Owain and he wanted to speed off in the excited rush to find the eggs, we had to keep encouraging him to wait for his sister, although to be honest, once she’d found the first stash of chocolate she was happy to let him do the rest of the work as long as she could start eating chocolate IMMEDIATELY!

This is the boy helping the girl to read the clue....notice his body is saying GO GO GO, LET'S FIND THE EGGS NOW but he's being patient...Another clue...Up the hill and take a peek
Something blue is what you seekThis is not the best photo in the world...but the best thing about it is the movement, expressing the joyful race between them to find the eggs!

So after a good hour of parental preparation, the Easter egg hunt itself lasted a good 5 minutes....but it was 5 minutes of intense childhood pleasure with a chocolate finale...what more could two children (and three adults...) hope for really!
At the end of the hunt, my daughter surprised us all with the request to eat some chocolate and... one of the boiled eggs...and they both polished off a beautifully coloured glazed boiled egg from their Easter egg cups.

Enjoy the holidays!
.