Easter Egg Hunt Escape Room!

I find that it's easier for people to understand Escape rooms if they see some visuals and read a more specific description of the activities.  I try to do all of my ER's with my groups to test them out, but I don't always get a chance.  I finally got to do my Easter ER with my young elementary and 4th/5th graders this year so I thought I'd share some things that I did!

If you are interested in purchasing this ER, the plans are very simple, but a LOT of fun!  Both of my groups had a blast and were so excited when they escaped!  Here is the link to purchase.  It is my cheapest ER because I only provide the plans - and only one of the puzzles.  Normally, I provide you with multiple ready-made clues.  But the puzzles are pretty easy to make and you probably have the materials on hand.

Obviously, you will need Easter Eggs and candy!

Some letter tiles from any game (Scrabble, Bananagrams, etc.) or you could
just write them on paper and cut them up.

a puzzle with pieces that fit into the eggs

In my plan, I provide you with a description of 4 clues they need to figure out and I give you ways to make those clues harder or easier depending on the age of your group.  The idea is for the kids to figure out the 4 shapes needed to unlock the lock and their correct order.  In my case, I got my directional lock out to use and realized I lost the previous combination!  So, I quickly ordered a new one from Amazon.  Unfortunately, it arrived 3 hours too late (no joke!) so I had to improvise.  What I did was put 4 papers up on the wall for both groups and numbered them 1-4.  They had to draw the correct shape on the correct paper in order to "escape the hunt".  It worked fine and they didn't seem to care that I didn't have an actual lock :)  Kids are very flexible!

Without giving away my entire hunt, one of the clues was to write something inside ONE of the eggs.  For the youngest group, I simply wrote the clue.  For the older group, I hid blacklight flashlights in the room and gave them a clue on the puzzle for where to find them.  Using the blacklight, they had to find which egg held the clue.  They were running out of time, so I helped them by telling them which child had the "special" egg (I wrote down which egg held the clue so I knew immediately who had it).  
 

older group with the clue using black light.  it was way brighter than it looks
in the picture

younger group with a clue written out with marker

To make it really interesting, I did my older elementary group in the gym...in the DARK!  I put obstacles everywhere, put glow lights in some of the eggs and had them hunt in the dark!  When they thought they got all the eggs, I gave them flashlights :)  It made the hunt last a little longer and they enjoyed the challenge!  I wanted their hunt/escape room to last 1 hour so I needed to give them some challenges.  Turned out, I didn't really need to, because they got stuck on the puzzle clue and the black light clue! lol

obstacles set up for the older elementary in our gym

using flash lights to find any remaining eggs

A few pointers if you buy the hunt and decide to do it.  One, the puzzle can take 1 minute or it can take 20.  My younger kids knew right away that the clue was on the BACK side of the puzzle and put it together upside down.  The older kids NEVER figured it out - even when I gave them the clue to "look at it in a different way".  I had to finally tell them to turn it over.  I've done ER's with a LOT of different groups and it's funny how some of them always overlook the obvious answers :)  Monitor your time so you know how long to give them.  We ran out of time and I had to give them the black light clue so they could finish before their parents came.  Second pointer - I decided to just have a regular egg hunt and hide clues in just a few of the eggs (maybe 20 eggs had clues and the rest were candy/prizes).  In my lesson plan, I suggested figuring out how many eggs you needed and put a clue in each egg.  That was more thinking than I wanted to do ;) I just made sure to hide the clue eggs in obvious places, because inevitably there is at least one egg that isn't found until the next fall ;) lol

Lastly, the Scripture clue (the one I provide), needs to be printed out on cardstock.  I didn't think about this ahead of time and they had a hard time putting it together.  Once they actually got it together, it was impossible to read...which kind of defeats the purpose since we do the activity to teach them about Easter - and the Scripture was key!

I hope you enjoy doing the egg hunt.  I would definitely do this again with other groups.  We all really enjoyed it - and I loved that it made my egg hunt last longer than 5 minutes!! :)