10 Steps To An Easter Egg Hunt On Wheels

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A Social-Distanced, Family-Friendly Option Perfect For Your Small Church

Are you looking for a creative way to reach out to your community at Easter time? Read how one church provided Easter baskets to children, offered a fun family experience, delivered devotionals, and promoted their Easter service –– all in one event!

Many small churches have been limited in their outreach efforts due to the pandemic. Depending on what area of the world you live in, restrictions and social distancing have been tough hurdles to work around. Easter is one of the best times of the year to reach new families in your community. So how can we still do this year’s event and respect all the safety protocols?

Try hosting an Easter Egg Hunt on Wheels! It’s easy to host and a great way to engage lots of people in your church to be involved.

This Family-Friendly Easter Egg Hunt Is A Perfect Outreach Event

This Easter egg hunt is not just for kids. It’s for all age groups and even the entire family.

Families do the entire egg hunt in their cars following a map where they find homes with eggs on their lawns. Each family team counts the number of eggs they see, and when they return to the church at the end of the hunt, each child receives an Easter basket.

Our primary focus for hosting this event was to do it as an outreach to our community and to give them a way to have a fun family event that was still safe. We advertised on social media and on library bulletin boards, and had our church family spread the word through flyers to neighbors, co-workers, and friends.

10 Steps For This Front Yard Easter Egg Hunt

Here’s a step-by-step guide to plan and coordinate this event successfully:

1. Choose Your Date, Time, & Place

Decide on your date and time. It will take 10 minutes to get everyone signed in and ready to start. You need a time limit on the actual annual Easter egg hunt; we gave them 1 hour and 30 minutes, but you can make that judgment based on traffic in your area, where the houses are located, etc.

2. Create Flyers And Promote Your Easter Egg Hunt

Produce your flyers and do your promotions. Make sure you have a place for families to register online and record how many children will be participating and their ages so that you will have enough prizes to distribute at the end.

3. Enlist Volunteers To Have An Easter Egg Display In Their Front Yard

Get volunteers from your church (or friends or relatives) to sign up to be a host home. It’s best to have your host homes located within 10-15 minutes of distance from your church for time efficiency.

Each host home has Easter eggs in a display of their choosing in front of their home. It could be on the lawn, on the garage door, on the side of the house, in the front window, on the mailbox, etc. It’s fun to get creative in your display, but you must make sure all Easter eggs are visible from the roadside. Each house can determine the number of eggs in the display, but it’s best to keep the number under fifteen. Have each host home let you know how many eggs will be displayed simply for reference.

We had some people who used giant plastic eggs they ordered online, some found blow-up eggs, and some people cut out egg shapes from foam core and painted them. Others used cardboard cutouts from the party store, and others hung large tissue paper eggs from trees. The possibilities are endless and so much fun!

4. Make Your Easter Egg Hunt Map

After you have all your host homes enlisted, you need to make a map of your town and mark where each home is located. The idea is to have more homes than the teams could get to in the time limit allowed. This encourages the teams to plan a route together and go to different areas of the town.

5. Confirm With All Who Register

Send out confirmation emails to all who register and explain how the Easter egg hunt will work, where to park when they arrive, rules for the road (obey all traffic rules, be kind and respectful of people’s property when you park to count eggs, etc.), and what to do when they return to the church at the end of the hunt. Make sure everyone knows when the official starting time is, and those who arrive late will have less time to hunt!

6. Put Your Easter Baskets Together

As your registrations come in, make up your Easter baskets or prize bags to give away to each child. We thought it would be a great idea for each kid to have their own basket. We asked for donations of small toys, candy, fruit, stuffed animals, and items from people in the church. The church bought the baskets and wrapping supplies, and the Organizing Committee put the baskets together.

7. Create An Information Packet

On the day of the hunt, make sure to have an Egg hunt packet (which should be sealed) ready for every family team. In the packet you will have:

• The official hunting map with all the homes marked/addresses listed
• A printed sheet of rules with time to return to the church
• A printed scorecard for them to write down their numbers and their family name
• We explained that we were using the honor system for the egg counts!
• We included a thank you note for participating and a special Easter devotional for families, and we encouraged them to take pictures along the way!

8. Figure Out Parking Lot Logistics

We marked an area in the parking lot with sawhorses and balloons so that families knew where to park for the start of the hunt. There were also greeters showing people where to go and welcoming them with a sign and a smile! We had someone with a clipboard going to each car taking names on a registration sheet and handing out the Egg hunt packets, explaining that packets won’t be opened until the mascot of the hunt tells everyone it’s time to GO!! We had a volunteer dress up as the Easter Bunny, but you can do whatever you like. It could even be the ‘Pastor of Ceremonies’!

9. On Your Mark – Get Set – Go!!

The mascot waved the flag and blew a whistle. The official Easter Egg Hunt on Wheels was a GO!!

While the teams were out hunting, we put signs out in the parking lot with arrows for when they returned. We made the parking lot one way and placed a big scoreboard at the finish line. There was also a table outside for the Easter basket distribution. We had someone there taking pictures of each family as they got their baskets (the Easter Bunny came and stood by each car for pictures), which we sent digitally to each family.

10. Set Up The Finish Line

When the time was up and families started to return, we had greeters pointing the way to get in line at the scoreboard area. Each car pulled up to the finish line and reported the number of eggs they found. The scorekeeper recorded the name and number on the scoreboard.

Families never had to leave their cars. Volunteers handed out baskets, and after a photo, the family would be on their way.

Involve The Youth Group For Extra Help 

We had some teens and other folks who offered to help make displays for some of our older church members who couldn’t get out to purchase items or had mobility issues and could not place the items in their yards. This was an added intergenerational connection bonus!

We also encourage our hosts to be outside their homes and wave to the families as they come through. We had some people wear silly hats, bunny ears, or hold big signs that said Happy Easter!! Just more fun!

Include An Invitation To Your Easter Church Service

After cleaning up, we knew which family had found the most eggs and we emailed the results to everyone with a final thank you for participating and a flyer invitation to our Easter services and any special events. We also sent a photo of their family at the finish line at this time.

This was a fun and unique way to reach families in our community with an Easter egg hunt that was low contact and safe. It was also a successful way to engage our church family in the mission of sharing God’s love. We hope that this will inspire you and your small church to reach out to your community this Easter season.

Looking for a step-by-step guide to starting or restarting your children’s ministry?

Check out the Children’s Ministry Bundle For Small Churches!

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