We have an Easter tradition here in the Logan family: Easter baskets at the end of an Easter treasure hunt.

Early Easter morning, Suzi and I hide clues in plastic eggs in and around the house. Egg #1 on the kitchen table starts the hunt; inside it is a clue to egg #2’s location. Something corny¹Obviously, we go for corny instead of difficult. like:

Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue.
I/d look where it’s tumbly and hot,
If I were you.

Egg #2, hiding in the dryer²I hope I didn’t give anything away there. contains the clue to egg #3’s hiding place, and so forth. The 20th egg (or so) contains the final clue to the Easter baskets’ hiding place.

We used to write the clues out by hand, getting confused about which clue went in which egg and where to hide them. Worse, if we didn’t keep track of where we hid all the eggs, we could end up with two eggs hidden in similar locations.³And maybe forgetting where all the eggs are. For example, the freezer in the garage and the refrigerator’s freezer might both be described with:

Some eggs like it hot,
As this egg’s spot shows.
Other eggs hide where it’s cold,
So it feels like it snows.⁴Good poetry isn’t our goal. Having fun and making the kids laugh is. You can write your clues to match your goals (and quality standards).

If there are eggs hiding in both locations, the kids might find the higher numbered egg. Our solution is to write all the clues in a word processor, including columns for clue order and location. Here’s a small portion of one year’s clues:

• All the clues in a single document make it easier to ensure there’s no potential overlap in clues and locations.
• The location column makes it easy for us to hide the eggs in the right place.
• The # column lets our kids know they’re finding the eggs in the right order.

We print out the clues, cut them apart along the horizontal lines, put them in eggs, and hide them. Then we watch the fun. :-)

We archive the clues, making each subsequent year’s setup easier. We have a bunch of clues that we can pick and choose for the ultimate Easter treasure hunt.

If you want to make the game more difficult, you can have the clues be different types of puzzles to solve. The eggs could contain a second set of clues that must be combined to find the final location. Have fun with it! We sure do. :-)

Does your family have any Easter traditions? Do you do some sort of Easter treasure hunt?

Photo credit: “Insert Humorous Egg Pun Here,” by EJP Photo. Used under a Creative Commons license.

• 1
  Obviously, we go for corny instead of difficult.
• 2
  I hope I didn’t give anything away there.
• 3
  And maybe forgetting where all the eggs are.
• 4
  Good poetry isn’t our goal. Having fun and making the kids laugh is. You can write your clues to match your goals (and quality standards).