When we lived near our families, we never had to worry about occupying the kids on Easter. Between church, a huge egg hunt, and a big meal, the kids were happy all day playing with their cousins. When we are home by ourselves though, it’s more of a challenge to fill up the day.
Here’s a very silly variation of tag. Little kids love this game and will run and giggle for a very long time with no arguments. Tie an empty Easter basket around each player’s waist. Give each of the players some plastic eggs. Instruct the players to try to get rid of their eggs. In order to get rid of their eggs they have to put them in other player’s baskets. The winner is the person with the least eggs in their basket. I have found that this game works best with young players. Older kids want to throw the eggs, argue the rules, and argue over whose egg rolled to the ground, and who intentionally ran so that the eggs fell out of their basket. I find that color coding the eggs works best for older children. One player gets blue, one yellow, one purple etc. That helps with some of the arguments.
If you have a smooth slanted area in your yard you can have an Easter egg roll. We have a section of driveway that’s perfect for this. Hard-boiled eggs wobble in weird and unpredictable ways. Line the bottom of the slant with open paper lunch sacks. If you want you can label the bags with different points, or silly locations like “Egg Palace” or “Scrambled” or things like that. Each player gently rolls eggs down the slant, trying to aim for certain bags. Instead of bags you can use baskets, or simply label areas with sidewalk chalk.
If you are stuck indoors, like we often are in Colorado, you can still have fun. I like to set up empty baskets with different points on them. We gently try to toss plastic eggs into the baskets. If you put a few candies in the eggs this becomes a lot harder because the weight of the candy will unbalance the eggs. Even teenagers and adults have fun with this.
Wishing you all a fun filled Easter!
Also See:
In Case of Bad Weather – Inside Easter Egg Hunts