Egg hunt help

[eosmum]

I'm organising an egg hunt for next week in my garden, there will be 18 children between 2 and 15 years, the two 15yo are the most excited about it. Anyone got any ideas for running it, in the past the bigger ones find the eggs first and I make them share with the others, but is there a better way of doing it. I was thinking of letting the small ones out to the garden to search but giving the bigger ones clues to find, can anyone think of good wording for clues for looking indoors? TIA

Yeah I tried that last year but the bigger ones got restless and were giving out the little ones were taking too long. Then a couple of them went out the front and climbed over the wall and "helped" the smaller ones, and granny said I was mean etc. etc. Maybe I could let the bigger ones out first and then the smallies, that might actually work. Thanks for that.

We used to make each child bring their own basket/container then put lots and lots of small, foil wrapped eggs out, almost just scatter them (tiny ones like the Lindt ones), the rule was you could only carry 1 egg at a time so the little ones would often see a bigger child find some then they would get one too as bigger child ran back to put it in their basket IYSWIM.

We also put out about 6 things that they had to get one of each, e.g. mini chocolate bar, lollipop, creme egg, etc. When older ones had the full set and were finding more while still looking for eggs they would call the little ones.

At the end of the time set each child who had the full set of 6 or so was a finalist and the winner was the one with the most little eggs. Winner won an Easter egg.

Sorry not explained that well, all the baskets were put in a row on the patio before everyone ran around like idiots.

Any bigger child who was caught with more than one little egg had a time penalty where they were restrained by their mum hugging them on the patio in public for 1 full minute

Oh excellent Tranquilidade, sounds like it could work. Like the idea of the hugging it would certainly be a deterrent.

Second offence had the threat of a 1 minute hug from somebody else's mum - never had to use that one!

I always lie about how many there are actually hidden.

It seems to add at least another hour while they look for the last non-existent 7 eggs.