Easter egg hunt vision: The kids are dressed in straw hats and pastels, laughing, and have a sweet time together as they casually hunt for eggs regardless of who gets what.
Easter egg hunt reality: Instead, our family videos portray elbows out, game faces on and no mercy. Someone always shouts “I found the golden egg!” (even when there is no golden egg) in order to distract other siblings. Clara wants to take her time and innocently examines the egg she found only to look up and see the brothers have made bank. She begins to cry. The boys are fighting over the last egg and who got more. Then there are the classic voiceovers by Marcello and I shouting and refereeing. “There is NO golden egg!” and “You have to share with your sister,” followed by “Do NOT push.”
Assigning a color
Isn’t that precious? Haha! But seriously, I bought some things for their baskets and it got me thinking. I already have a ton of plastic eggs from years past. Why not pick out three colors and assign one to each kid?
It wouldn’t be any harder than what I’m already doing. That way Clara can take her time and enjoy herself and the boys won’t fight about who got more! The loot will be fair. (Why does someone always end up with all the jelly beans and someone else scores all the money?) And I can even personalize them a bit.
By the way, these are their favorite colors, and they seem to love it when I color code their things. I think it’s because there is less chance of a sibling taking something of theirs. That’s why I like it anyway — less squabbling about whose is whose! Not sure what I’ll do when they’re sick of their color or pick a different favorite! For now it works great for water bottles, shoe bins, backpacks, similar toys.
So that’s my plan! Luca can only pick up green eggs, Adriano gets blue and Clara can take her time with pink. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Garden themed Easter baskets
When I was at the Dollar Tree I noticed they had all kinds of spring items — shovels, seeds, flower pinwheels, gardening gloves, nets. I thought it would be fun to do a garden-themed Easter basket. And they even had them in my kids’ colors! I think I might try to hide these around the yard too, because that’s their favorite part!
How much did you spend for Easter?
I also bought kites, paintable egg ornaments and bunny ears at the Dollar Tree. I found hopper balls for $5 at Five Below awhile back. I’ll probably spend $6 on candy. And I’ll give them each $3 in change. That equals about $19 per kid.
As far as Easter apparel, we’re easy like Sunday morning over here. (See what I did there?) I buy one season-less holiday outfit for each boy for the whole year — it’s a light blue button-down shirt, navy pants and a blue and green tie. That’s it for Christmas, Easter or weddings. Clara still fits into her dress from last year so hooray!
What do you think you’ll do for the kids this year? What traditions do you have?
UPDATE
It worked! Having one color per kid worked amazingly well! I could not believe the difference from last year to this year — not one tantrum or complaint. They even helped each other find their eggs! So yes, I definitely recommend assigning colors for Easter egg hunts. It’s a new family tradition here.
More
Be sure to check out this resurrection egg activity! We do this interactive Easter story for kids every year. It’s perfect for Palm Sunday.
Where did you get your baskets from? I love them!
Baskets are from World Market. We use them every year!
We have been assigning kids with their own colors for a couple years now and it is great. (hence no more elbows) we have the 5 cousins come over (oldest is 7 and the youngest is 2) so it works out so great. Then you can specialize it with stickers and treats for the older ones versus the younger ones. Highly recommend.
Amanda, I’m so excited to hear that it works!! Thank you so much for sharing. Hooray!!
I am trying this method this year and although everyone will end up with the same items I’m praying nobody cries over their assigned color….I am working with 5 toddler boys and the colors are yellow, orange, blue, pink and purple. My husband thinks it is going to cause tears. Only time will tell.
Oh my! Well, there would probably be tears anyway with 5 toddlers one way or another. At least there always was at my house when my three were toddlers! One kid got more eggs, one kid got all the skittles … Praying the color coding works for you this year!