Egg Hunts can be so much more than just grab some eggs and go home. In fact, if that is all your event is, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to reach your community. I’ve run egg hunts for years. In They became family traditions for the whole neighborhood.

I’ve written extensively about how to create your own egg hunt in part 1 here and part 2 here. In this post, I’ll dive deeper into the day of and how to create a schedule that keeps families engaged, spreads the Gospel, and gets everyone home before 2pm.

Before we dive in, a little context. This schedule is built for an event to run from 10 -12 with the hunt starting at 10:30.

8:30 Set up

Volunteers meeting before we start set up.

Because the Egg Hunt is an outdoor event, setting up the day before can be a challenge. One year, I set up my registration area the Friday before. Part of the setup consisted of 4 EZ Up tents. They worked great, but I didn’t have stakes to keep them down. Unfortunately, It was especially windy that weekend. Within a few hours, all 4 of my tents were in shambles.

My Administrative Pastor wasn’t happy. I had to replace all of them that afternoon. After that incident, I made sure I had 2 things: stakes for the tents and everything is staged. This way, when my volunteers arrive, we just have to go to one place to pick up supplies that’s warm, dry, and away from wind!

I ask all my volunteers to arrive by 8:30. I provide breakfast and hold a short meeting explaining the day’s schedule. Because everything is staged and my egg hunts don’t require a lot of materials, we can get the entire event up and running by 9:30. That includes sectioning off the egg hunt zone and setting up registration, the inflatables, the stage and sound system. We also set out the prize baskets and put boxes of eggs in the middle of the hunting zone.

9:30 Registration Opens

More registration people make the sign-in process go faster and smoother.

Even though we shoot for 9:30 set up, not everything needs to be ready by that time. The big things that must be set up are registration and the inflatables.

The inflatables are big attention grabbers. Make sure they’re visible from the street. If you have kids, you know once they see a giant slide, obstacle course, or bouncy house, they’re going to want to stop. Use that to your advantage and get those up as soon as possible.

Many times, my inflatable guy would deliver the day before. So, getting them inflated involves running power or turning on the generators. It doesn’t take much.

Registration, on the other hand, requires more. I always have on-site registration and pre-registration. That’s 2 different lines with tables, clip boards, handouts, wristbands and more. Registration is always my biggest team. They work hard for that hour getting everything ready.

Opening my registration 30 minutes before the event begins may seem excessive. But I always had people show up super early. Especially once the inflatables were turned on.

10am Present the Gospel

At 10am, my host (most of the time this was me) would announce we’re about to begin the show and invite everyone to gather around the stage. We placed the stage in front of the hunting area so everyone will be close to the action.

This was the 10-minute warning to my registration and inflatable people to wrap things up. By the time I started talking, we wanted the lines empty, and the inflatables deflated. We turn them back on after the presentation.

By 10:10, I’ve started the presentation. I’ve done a lot of different things here. From a full-blown hour-long kid service to a 15 minute Gospel presentation. Over the years, I’ve learned less is more.

In this time, I’ll invite everyone to Sunday, talk about the prize eggs, and how the hunt will work for each age group. (More on that in a minute) Then I’ll present the Gospel in a short, compact way. I’ll create a post in the coming weeks of my favorite presentation.

Many people don’t like egg hunts because they’re all about eggs and bunnies. This is why I always present the Gospel. Unlike my fall festivals this is not a come and go event, but rather a stay and play. Since I have everyone’s attention, I may as well tell them about Jesus.

10:30 Time to Hunt!

Everyone loves hunting eggs. I only let parents help for preschoolers and younger.

After the gospel message I’ll repeat how the egg hunt is going to go and get started. I found that having one, big hunting zone was better than having everyone search at the same time in different areas. Having one big zone allows parents to watch/participate with all their kids instead of having to choose.

How you split up your hunting groups depends on two things. One, how many people come to your event and two, the hunting area. I typically split my group by ages. I start with 0-3 and special needs, then 4–6-year-olds, then 7-9-year-olds, and finally 10-12-year-olds.

To help kids know when they’re hunting, I assign wristbands to each age group. Instead of saying it’s time for 7–9-year-olds to hunt, I’d say, “it’s time for kids with yellow wristbands to line up!” I saw a lot less cheating and confusion doing it this way.

Special note: I only let parents help the preschoolers and the special needs kids hunt for eggs. Those kids need the most help. If you let parents come into the other areas, it can get chaotic fast. You don’t want a 30-year-old man knocking over a 5-year-old to get an egg. Just keep them out.

I told my volunteers to only let a certain color enter the area at a time. Everyone had to hold up their wristband before we said go to make sure the right kids were lined up.

Once you say go, don’t blink or you’ll miss the entire hunt. My volunteers can usually start each age group within 10 minutes of each other.

In between the hunts, I’ll do another activity on the stage. I'll do a game involving kids and parents (dads are a plus!), a sketch, a song, or just something to keep them occupied while the volunteers set up.

11:10 Prize Distribution and more fun

I gave away 2 Easter baskets for each age group. Kids had to find special eggs hidden with all the others.

Once the presentation is over, I’ll turn the inflatables back on. This allows kids to play while they wait for their turn. 12-year-olds are waiting almost 30 minutes they need something to do. They’re not going to want to sit and watch everyone else before they go.

Now that the hunt is over, people will begin to leave, but I keep everything on until 12pm. The kids who found our prize eggs redeem their prizes, while others will play a little longer. Registration, tech and stage volunteers, and egg hunt distributors start the cleanup process.

By 12pm, we make one final announcement thanking everyone for coming and invite them to Sunday. Then we shut down the inflatables and the music. Taking away the fun and music gives people the message that the event is over. If you leave those on, people will stay all day.

At this point just about everything is cleaned up and ready to be put away. I start dismissing volunteers as we finish putting everything away. Throughout the event, I try to keep things as clean as possible. Sunday is the next day after all. I don’t want to spend the afternoon cleaning the church. Nor do your volunteers. If I can’t put everything back in its place, I’ll put it in the staging area, out of sight, so that I can take care of it during the week.

I rarely, if ever, will stay past 2pm. A few volunteers stay with me to make sure it’s all done. We thank God for a great day and get some rest. Sunday is coming!

An egg hunt is a great community outreach for Easter. You need to have a good plan for the event, otherwise it could be a disaster. If you follow my plan, you’ll keep families engaged, share the Gospel, and get home by 2pm. Everyone is happy!