- The idea behind scavenger hunts on Easter comes from the egg as a symbol of fertility in many cultures, and from the bunny as the symbol of a Pre-Christian Pagan Goddess of fertility. The tradition was brought to the United States by German immigrants in the 1700s, who told their children that the Easter bunny would bring colored eggs on Easter morning to any children who had been well-behaved during the previous year. So, when children woke up, they immediately began searching for the eggs, and the tradition of Easter scavenger hunts began.
- In order to make sure that the eggs will be capable of withstanding the physical hardships of being left in a hiding place overnight (unless the eggs are hidden just before the children wake up on Easter morning), and of being roughly handled by a small child before being tossed into a basket with a bunch of other colored eggs, make sure to hard-boil the eggs before coloring and hiding them. The best way to hard-boil the Easter eggs is to put them in a pot of salty water, bring the water to a boil and then keep them in the boiling water for 6 minutes.
- Coloring the eggs is one of the most important parts of an Easter scavenger hunt. This can be done in one of two ways. Either the parents can include the children in the egg-coloring process, because it is a lot of fun to do and the children can customize the egg coloring with their own unique patterns or drawings, if parents use brushes and non-toxic paint instead of bowls of water with food coloring. Parents can also choose to color the eggs themselves and surprise the children in the morning by saying the Easter bunny came and left them the eggs.
- The placement of the eggs for an Easter scavenger hunt is usually done by putting the eggs in progressively harder-to-find places as the ages of the children go up. If there is a big difference in the ages of the participating children, one idea is to color their eggs two different colors, so the older child will know not to take the eggs that are meant for a younger sibling.
- Some alternatives to the classic Easter egg hunt include getting plastic eggs that the children can open up, and parents can put candies or chocolates inside as a reward for finding the eggs. Plastic eggs are easy to assign certain colors to older or younger children as well, and this is a good method to make sure that all of the children get the same amount of candies or chocolates.
