Easter egg hunts are the best. The starting-line giddiness. The thrill of of the quest. The satisfaction that comes with the post-hunt tally (“Thirty-eight eggs! Huzzah!”). They are a tradition that every kid should be able to take part in, regardless of ability.
Here’s how you can make your Easter egg hunt more accessible.
Tie balloons to the eggs
Tying a helium-filled balloon onto each egg allows kids with mobility challenges to participate in the hunt while remaining in their wheelchairs, gait trainers and walkers.
(Bonus: It ensures that all the eggs in your yard will be found — nobody wants to discover the melted chocolate remnants of a rogue plastic egg four months after Easter.)
Stick the eggs on a wall
Another modification for children with mobility challenges is to set up an egg hunt along an open wall. It’s something Julie Jones at Have Wheelchair Will Travel has done for her kids.
Using sticky tack or other non-damaging adhesive, place the plastic eggs at a good height for the children. (The eggs can’t be too heavy, of course — you might fill them with stickers or temporary tattoos, or let the hunters trade in empty eggs for a toy at the end.)
Alternately, if you don’t have an open wall, you can set up a pathway of chairs or stools and place the eggs on top of them.
Add magnets to the eggs
More communities are hosting magnetic egg hunts, where kids who have difficulty reaching the ground are given magnetic poles to collect magnetic eggs. You can create this type of hunt on your own using small magnets and a glue gun.
(Be sure to supervise young kids with this activity, as it’s very dangerous to swallow a magnet.)
Make the eggs beep
For children who are visually impaired, you can have the eggs make noise. There are instructions online for assembling a beeping egg, like this one by a dad named David Hyche or this one from Instructables.
(You can also buy beeping eggs on Amazon, though they’re quite pricey.)
Kids without vision impairments can participate in the hunt, too — just put blindfolds on them. At the end of the hunt, the participants can trade in their eggs for a prize, and you can reuse the eggs year after year.
Assign each kid a colour
A simple way to level out the egg-hunting field for kids of differing ages and abilities is to assign each kid a colour. That way, each child can take as long as he needs without being trampled, Lord of the Flies style.
Happy hunting, kids!
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