Are you tired of the same Easter Egg Hunt every year? You know, the one that has kids thinking about finding more eggs than their siblings rather than thinking about Jesus? I just might have found something that can help. Our family test drove some products from Egglo Entertainment and now I get to tell you about them.
The cornerstone of the Egglo Entertainment idea is their Glow in the Dark Easter Eggs. I don't know where the traditional idea of hunting Easter eggs hails from, but it doesn't seem to get kids thinking about what Jesus did for them. My experience with kids tells me they aren't thinking about Jesus at all. They're thinking about candy. Specifically, they're thinking about making sure they get more candy than the next kid. Not very Christ-like, huh? Egglo Eggs put a whole new twist on the Easter Egg Hunt. By emphasizing that Jesus is the Light of the World, they turn the "me, me, me" Easter Egg Hunt into a search for Light. John 1:5 says that the Light shines in the dark and the darkness has not overcome it. How better to see the powerful effect of light than by searching for it in the dark?
But to get the most out of the Egglo Glow in the Dark Easter Egg Hunt, you need to spend a little time teaching the kids that Jesus is the Light of the World. That way, they will make the connection between looking for the glowing eggs and the Light of Jesus entering a dark and sinful world. Egglo Entertainment has several products to help you do that.
The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure book (and optional audio book) is a neat little story about some kids, each with a character flaw, who find that the Light of the Word of God sets them free. It is not a Bible story about the resurrection of Jesus. You'll need a good story Bible for that. This is just a fun story with great pictures that connects the idea of searching for scripture with searching for Easter Eggs.
The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Program Guide contains more ideas that will help you connect looking for the Light of Jesus with hunting for Easter Eggs. You can do all of the activities, or just choose a few, depending on the size and ages of your group and your time constraints. There are ideas for teaching, scripture memorization, decorations, printables, coloring pages, and even snack "crafts" that kids can make and then eat. I thought the idea of using a donut or bagel to make an empty tomb was great. It was easy enough for my three year old without totally boring my 10 year old. That wins points in my book.
After our family discussed the Resurrection story and used some of the teaching ideas in the Program Guide, we read the Egg-cellent Easter Adventure book together. Then we made and ate (the best part, right?)some of the food crafts. Now it was time for the highlight of the evening -- the Glow in the Dark Easter Egg Hunt. We had to do our egg hunt indoors because it is was a little bitterly cold outside, but it should be much warmer at Easter time around here (when we plan to do this again). So I scooted the kiddos out of the room and hid the glowing eggs. I had them "charging" -the eggs, not the kids - in the light during our party. (Here's a little tip -- if you happen to have a black light handy, black lights give a really good charge to glowing things.)
I don't like the whole "free for all" idea of an egg hunt, so we do ours differently. Usually when we have an egg hunt, I assign the kids each a certain color egg. If they see a different color egg while they're hunting, they just leave it alone. It belongs to a different kid. I pack each kid's eggs the same, so nobody has to worry that a sibling will get more than them. Also, as some of my kids started morphing into teenagers, I started putting things like money in the eggs. Suddenly, egg hunts are interesting to teens again. Amazing. For this egg hunt, I packed all the eggs identically and gave the kids a specific number of eggs to find instead of a color. It can be a little hard to tell glowing green from glowing yellow, and the kids are following the glow of light before they actually see the color of the egg, anyway. Giving the kids a number instead of a color solved the issue for us.
The Egglo Treasures Scripture Scrolls are a great idea and a wonderful tie-in to the book. There are 12 scrolls in a package, each with different scriptures relating to Jesus and His Light. It may just be me, but I wouldn't recommend skipping the candy and using only scrolls unless you want your kids to think Jesus is a cheapskate. That being said, I was really surprised by how much Pickle-Mickle (3 yrs. old) liked the scrolls. After May-May helped her open and read the first one, Pickle-Mickle was more interested in finding all the scrolls than she was in finding the candy. Of course, after they read all the scrolls she was back to the candy. Oh well. It was good while it lasted.
If you want to use Egglo to make your Easter celebrations more meaningful this year, you can check out Egglo Entertainment. They market the products for kids aged 4-13, but my kids range in age from 3-16. My teens helped me throw the party for the younger kids, but even the older kids still like a good hunt, and none of them have grown out of candy yet. Besides, everything is cooler when it glows, right? Here is the price breakdown of the things we tried (at the time of this post):
Now I'm looking into how we might want to use this for a much larger group at our church. So if you're reading this and you're part of our church leadership, consider yourself forewarned. You'll probably be hearing from us soon. *wink*
Have a great day! Angela
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