Toddler+
S looooves Easter Egg hunts. So much so that she magically transforms into the Easter Bunny year round and hides "eggs" (these are usually wood blocks) in the playroom for me to hunt. So this year, with her being a bit older, I wanted to mix things up by introducing a nighttime (or just in-the-dark - we have blackout blinds in her room so we can hunt during the day, too) egg hunt.
I had the (I thought) brilliant idea of buying glow-in-the dark paint to paint some of our old plastic eggs. There were three different brands to choose from at Michaels. S and I love an experiment, so we set up a trial to compare the three. We tried glow in the dark paint from Martha Stewart, Americana, and Craftsmart and assigned a different color egg to each brand.
Though they were all non-toxic, I wasn't jazzed at the idea of them coating S's skin, so tried some no-hands painting, which she thought was hilarious. As per the instructions on the bottle, we did two coats, allowing the paint to dry for 3 or more hours in between.
The Martha Stewart paint adhered to the eggs the easiest, but it was by far the worst at glowing. So much so that I intend to try to return the paint to Michaels. It was just abysmal! Americana and Craftsmart were equally glowy. They were each just a dollar for a full bottle, and with two coats per egg, you could easily paint 10, if not 12 plastic eggs. The price was awesome, and I loved that the eggs would last for quite sometime. The only downside is that the eggs lose their glow fairly quickly over about 15 minutes. They do "recharge" very quickly (around a minute or so was enough for us), but if you are doing a hunt with a toddler who is likely to take some time to find the eggs, these might not be ideal. On the other hand, they do make things more challenging for older children - a sort of built in timed hunt - so I guess whether or not this would be a good activity would depend on your child's age and whether they're likely to race or meander through a hunt. :)
Next we tried glow-in-the dark bracelets stuffed inside eggs. As you can see from the photo, these were much brighter than the glow-in-the-dark painted eggs. You can buy sleeves of glow-in-the-dark bracelets from Michaels for $1 (that's for a dozen), so the price isn't bad - but the bracelets only glow for a few hours brightly. We've had some that have lasted a full 24 hours, but most of them peter out before that. So if you wanted to be able to repeat the hunt several times over different days, this could end up being a more expensive method.
The third method of hunting was for regular plastic eggs in the dark using a flashlight. S loves flashlights as well. She's even created a verb for using her flashlight: flashlighting. Sometimes she'll just wander off with it, informing me that she's "going flashlighting for a bit". Because she enjoys them so much, she actually has her own little mini LED flashlight.
So this seemed right up her alley - and in fact, when I surveyed her on the three types of hunts, the flashlight hunt was her favorite (though she said she had fun with all of them).
So this seemed right up her alley - and in fact, when I surveyed her on the three types of hunts, the flashlight hunt was her favorite (though she said she had fun with all of them).I love this shot of her finding an egg on her drum. It looks like the moon!
She found another one!
We had fun experimenting with different paints and different ways of hunting eggs in the dark. Hopefully this will give you some ideas for new ways to try hunting for eggs! Oh, and for the record, all the eggs were empty. We were just hunting for the eggs themselves for the fun of it.
Have you seen our other Easter-themed activities?
Please always supervise your infant/child at play. Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.
Great ideas! I can't wait until our little gal is old enough for this type of hunt!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Steph! Crazy to think she (and X!) will be able to run for Easter eggs next year!!!
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