We had fun checking out and participating in this egg hunt at the titular Jefferson Park. It was a different sort of egg hunt than I've seen before, I think. Here, the children hunt for eggs, but the eggs are empty. Then the kids turn in the empty eggs to get prizes at the various tables set upon the perimeter of the egg pen. You just have to turn in one egg at any table to get something, so if there's 10 tables you just need 10 eggs. That doesn't stop the kids from getting lots of them if they can, of course! And the egg hunt had plenty of eggs. When the park district employee who was explaining the rules said that they'd all be gone in seconds, I wasn't sure if my little one would get any eggs but she filled her basket, as did many of the other kids. My baby had a lot of fun and enjoyed going to the different tables, where she got stuff like stickers, a piece of candy, a pinwheel, etc. She was a little upset about giving away all her eggs until I explained what was going on with them.
I thought there were one or two ways that it could have been a bit better. Jeff Park is a big one, and there must be a reason for where they situated the hunt, but they put it on the patch of grass in the northeast corner and there were larger parcels of land. It got a bit crowded with the tables taking up space on the path in the park. Also, one of the tables had a couple of large prizes they were doing something with at the end of the day, apparently (I heard them explaining to the parent in front of me), but it wasn't something that was feasible to sit around and wait for. The second egg hunt (out of three) for the morning hadn't even started yet, and the third and final wouldn't be over for at least 30-40 minutes. My kiddo is too young to care about them but it seems like it would create logistical problems (parking, people space, etc.) if you have attendees from all of the three egg hunts waiting for some large prize giveaway. But in any case, that didn't matter for us.
The folks volunteering at the egg hunt were pretty much all very friendly and seemed excited to be there. I really appreciated that the one table where the Easter bunny was sitting had a volunteer taking photos for people--I thought it was a man taking photos for his family. As any mom reading this knows, we are lucky if we're part of the photo because we're always the ones taking them, so that was nice. Parking was a breeze, totally contrary to what I was expecting. It was probably in large part because we were in the under 3's group, the earliest egg hunt, so all of us were the first ones taking spots. But we got one across the street from the park about 15 minutes before the egg hunt was scheduled so that was a nice surprise. All in all, I'd consider attending this egg hunt again if we didn't have something else happening when it was scheduled. A fun, easy, free activities for the kids is always welcome! read more