Keep Easter Puzzling

Don't want to fill those Easter baskets with candy this year?  I have a couple ideas you might like...and they even require the kids to use their brains!

Every year, I buy a small to medium lego set and fill a bunch of plastic eggs with the pieces.  The Easter Bunny then hides all the eggs, and the kids have to make sure they find all the eggs they need to complete their set!

On previous years I've labeled the outside of the eggs with a "J" or a "G" (in sharpie) for each kid so they know whose legos eggs are whose.  It'd get pretty confusing trying to build your set with the wrong legos!  This year we bought some fancy plastic eggs and I didn't want to write on them.  I decided to put a yellow Post-It strip in all Jack's eggs and a green Post-It strip in Ginny's.  After finishing all the egg stuffing, I realized that that might get to be a bit mess since they have to open each egg to see if it's theirs...and will probably spill!

In any case, I've always felt that building a lego set is not only fun, but a challenging brain exercise.  I like buying these for my kids thinking that they are doing more than just playing with a toy.  And building a lego model successfully requires carefully following the directions!  Always a good skill to practice!

Also in the kid's eggs this year are these little wooden "Bamboozlers Range"puzzles.  I had to use a really big egg (found that at Target this year) for one of these, but the other fit in a regular sized one.  Just be careful taking these out of the box.  The Hexacube broke into a bunch of pieces and it didn't seem right to leave it that way.  Rebuilding it took an extra 15 minutes!  Those pieces are slippery.

Here's what those puzzles look like inside their eggs.

I also picked up Story Cubes.  These have been on our to-buy list for ages.  We haven't played it yet, but we think it will be quite a lot of fun.  

And here are the dice in their camo eggs.  (Camo eggs are a requirement when your husband is in the Army!)

And what could be more puzzly than a jigsaw puzzle?  I got Ginny these smart owls and Jack this 3d sun.

Here's how they settled into their little eggs!  Two of the sun pieces were too big for any of my eggs, so they're sitting in Jack's basket waiting for him.

This is Ginny's basket.  It's a metal pail from Target.  The Easter Bunny will hide the eggs on the appropriate evening, but the puzzle box and lego instructions will remain here.  That gives the kids an idea of what to expect inside the eggs. And you want to save the puzzle box so they know what the picture is and have somewhere to store it too.  I did fill some of the eggs with candy.  I do like those M&M easter eggs and surely the kids will share some with me!?!

Need more ideas?  Check out my Easter Blog Post from last year too!
Happy Hunting!