It's that time of the year!! The whole family comes down to my house to spend time together, eat Easter dinner, and have an egg hunt... Last year was the first time that Easter was at my house and the egg hunt was CHAOS and it was harder to motivate the big kids to take part! This year, I made a better plan!!
First things first - We have 6 big kids, so I bought six different Easter baskets from Wal-Mart. I wrote each child's name on a basket. I also bought six different colored Easter grass and each basket got a different color and we divided 30 Easter eggs of that color into each basket.
Next, we went to Dollar Tree and bought six different 30 piece puzzles and came home to put then together. (Note to Self - They are only a dollar so buy one or two extras just in case you are doing this late at night and you start to put the LAST puzzle together and you realize that it has ONE piece missing, and OF COURSE, the Dollar Tree is closed so you have to go on a hunt for a 30 piece puzzle the night before Easter!!!!!)
After each puzzle was together, I took a Sharpie and wrote each child a note on their puzzle. For example - "David - To find your Easter surprise, open Envelope #1." Inside that envelope, I put a card from the Easter bunny and a gift card individualized for that kid. The older kids received gas cards, Starbucks, movie tickets, etc. The younger children received gift cards from Target, Toys R Us, and GameStop.
Then, we put each puzzle piece into that child's specifically colored eggs! For example, David's Easter grass was orange so each piece of his puzzle went into an orange egg. All of Chase's puzzle pieces went into the green eggs, etc.
After all of the puzzle pieces were stuffed into eggs, we hid them! This was such a fun Easter! The children were helping each other find eggs and so were all of the adults!! Once they found their thirty eggs, they had to put their puzzle together, find out what number envelope was theirs, and come see me to receive their prize. It was a very fun Easter egg hunt!