Fresh Ideas for a Fun, Festive Easter

Vote for Your Favorite Easter Egg Design by March 6! You Could Win One of 10 Prize Packages and Help Support Easter Seals

(ARA) - If you're like many American families, Easter is a favorite season for adults and kids alike. Activities like egg decorating and egg hunts help make Easter a time of genuine celebration.

A fun twist on a family custom can help make this year's event especially memorable, and perhaps even spark a new tradition. For ideas about how to make this year's Easter fresh and festive, we turned to the "egg-sperts."

"Kids are naturally creative, so it's easy to spark their imagination," says Michelle Soutter of PAAS, the Easter egg color company that's been a part of America's Easter tradition for 125 years. "Let them be your inspiration, or use some of these Easter egg decorating tips and Easter activity ideas to get you started."

For more fun ways to make your Easter celebration a "hop-ening" event, visit www.paaseastereggs.com.

Easter Activities

PAAS suggests Easter activities that let kids practice spelling, adding or being inventive. "We like activities that include the whole family. Kids and adults playing together is a great way to make the day special," says Soutter.

Vote for Your Favorite Easter Egg before March 6, 2005. Visit www.paaseastereggs.com to vote for your favorite of three drawings created by Eric Rohmann (whose book "My Friend Rabbit" won the 2003 Caldecott Medal for illustration) for the PAAS 125th Anniversary Egg. Each vote enters you into a drawing for one of 10 PAAS prize packages, and PAAS will make a donation to Easter Seals for a total of $10,000 (vote as many times as you wish until March 6, 2005). Rohmann will paint the winning design on a 6-inch ceramic egg, which will be displayed at the Easter Eggstravaganza in New York City, March 26, and then donated to Easter Seals.

Family Fun Easter Egg Hunt. Choose a dye color for each person in your family and have them search for all of "their" eggs (you can also make eggs unique by decorating them with stickers, or drawing special designs or writing names on them). For fun the whole family can enjoy, include parents, grandparents and other adults and have the kids hide the grown-ups' eggs.

"I Can Spell!" and "I Can Add!" Easter Egg Hunts. Decorate some of your Easter eggs with letters or numbers. For the "I Can Spell Easter Egg Hunt," have kids collect all the eggs that spell certain words, like their names or words associated with Easter. For the "I Can Add Easter Egg Hunt," total the numbers on the eggs each child collects and the child with the biggest total wins a special prize (give out prizes for the other kids, too).

Easter Egg Roll. You'll need one Easter egg for each player, a wide patch of grass, big spoons, and "Start" and "Finish" lines. Divide races up by age groups to make it more fun for little kids. Each player gets an Easter egg and a spoon. At the word "go," use the spoon to push the egg towards the finish line. The winner is the first person to cross the finish line with their egg.

Easter Egg Theater or Fashion Show. Put on a puppet-style play of the Easter story -- or any story you'd like to tell -- with Easter egg characters. Draw faces on your eggs to create characters, or Use PAAS Egg Heads decorating kit, with funny face stickers, felt hats and collar stands. Similar idea: Use a Glamour Eggs kit to create sensational outfits for an Easter egg "fashion show."

Courtesy of ARA Content