Join in the Easter fun with the National Trust!

This post brought to you by National Trust. All opinions are 100% mine.
Are you stuck for something fun and egg-citing to do over Easter with the family?
Why not Join in the Easter fun with National Trust and kick off the Easter holidays with one of the Cadbury and National Trust Easter Egg Trails and family activities happening at over 240 locations. There is the fun new egg and spoon races on Easter Monday, plus the chance to go on bug hunts, climb trees and build dens, as well as a whole host of Easter celebrations including egg rolling and duck racing.

Cadbury Easter Egg Trails - running from 29th March until 1st April
Taking place in some of the UK's most beautiful ourdoor spaces, the Cadbury and National Trust Easter Egg Trails as an element of joy to the traditional egg hunt, with plenty to see, do and learn in the great outdoors. Whether you're a child or simply young at hear, adventrue is sure to lie ahead; you can follow cryptic clues around the spring gardens and parkland, complete fun-filled challenges and enjoy nature and fresh air in the nation's most spectacular outdoor places to hun down a delicious Cadbury prize.
Sounding fun; what are you waiting for? Hop on an Easter egg trail with National Trust and Cadbury!
Each trail is totally unique to its place and offers a wide range of outdoor activities for all to enjoy such as:

• Design Your Own Egg Head - children can enter the competition for the chance to see their design come to life on a real Cadbury Easter Egg Head
• Giant snakes and ladders - fun for all ages
• Sack races - leap ahead and bring out your competitive streak
• Face painting - a sure fire winner with people of all ages

Egg and spoon races - Easter Monday, 1st April
Brand new this year! Families can take par in another traditional Easter favourite - the egg and spoon race! National Trust is calling all racers, young to old, to join in with the fun and come armed with their lucky spoon to kick off the race of the season!
In the spirit of April Fools' Day, there will be races in fancy dress, three-legged, blind-folded, as well as an attempt to achieve the nation's biggest egg and spoon race!
Wider Easter offer - outdoor adventures
The Easter weekend is jam-packed full of Cadbury and National Trust Easter Egg Trails and activities as well as the silliness of the egg and spoon, but the family fun doesn't stop there!
Throughout the Easter holidays, there's the chance to go on bug hunts, climb trees and build dens, as well as a whole host of Easter celebrations including egg rolling and duck racing.
You can Find a fab family Easter event by typing in your postcode. A list of local places will display and you can click on each place to see what activities they will be running over Easter. Also, it will display the times which the trail starts and ends.
I found that 3 local National Trust locations are running trails. Two have face painters and one has face painters aswell as a game area; which I know Jack would really enjoy.

Zappar & Asda host a reality enabled Easter Egg hunt!

Zappar and Asda bring to life the classic Easter Egg Hunt

Zappar, the leaders in Augmented Reality (AR) - enabled products and entertainment experiences, has teamed up with Asda supermarket for the UK’s first-ever augmented reality enabled Easter Egg Hunt. Asda shoppers will be delighted to set off on an in-store Easter Egg Hunt, guided by an augmented reality Easter Bunny powered by Zappar. The fun will be taking place from 10am – 4.30pm on Saturday 23^rd March.

Specially designed Easter Egg point of sale will be hidden around almost 400 Asda stores across the UK for children and adults to discover. When zapped using the Asda app, each egg will transform into virtual 3D Easter Eggs revealing an Easter Bunny hidden inside that will display a secret letter. The letters will form a password that once completed, will entitle the successful treasure hunters to a free gift!

Shoppers will only need to download the free Asda app onto a smartphone or tablet and then get zapping in Asda stores across the country. The fun starts when the Easter Bunny will leap out of his hole from a floor mat and tell kids and their parents all about this magical hunt. It will also be possible to pose with the AR Easter Bunny to take photos and video to share with friends!

For those without a smartphone there will be Events staff on hand with iPads so everyone can enjoy the fun.

And the magic of this augmented reality Easter Egg Hunt does not end in store! Participants will be able to take home a face mask from stores that when zapped, replaces the wearer’s head with that of the Easter Bunny.

This exclusive experience has been made all the more possible with the recent installation of Wi-Fi in all Asda stores.

Max Dawes, Head of Partner Relations at Zappar, said: “Our specialism at Zappar is in creating AR-enabled products and entertainment experiences! Everyone loves an Easter Egg Hunt; it is definitely one of the highlights of the holiday in many children’s minds. To be able to provide a sprinkle of Zappar magic dust to the in-store experience and create the first ever augmented reality Easer egg hunt in partnership with Asda on such a grand scale is just fantastic.”

Steph Hughes, Head of Events Marketing at Asda added, “The AR Easter Egg Hunt is a great way to get across the Asda personality and another example of how Asda stores are a destination for mums and kids. We are really exciting to be embracing this new technology and incorporating it into the Asda app.  Hopefully everyone enjoys meeting the Easter Bunny!”

Kate Cuthbertson, Head of Mobile Innovation at Asda added, “More than two million Asda mums have already downloaded our mobile grocery app to do their online shopping with, saving them stacks of time which they can then spend with their families. We are now looking at how the app can come to life inside our stores so we can help make the shopping experience more fun and enjoyable for them and their families. Free WiFi in all our stores opens up all sorts of exciting opportunities, including the use of augmented reality (AR).  Our Easter Egg hunt is a fun way to promote the Asda mobile app to even more of our customers, demonstrating how easy it is to use, while wowing them some amazing new AR technology.”

Zappar for iPhone, iPod and iPad:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zappar/id429885268?mt=8

For Android:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.zappar.Zappar

Easter egg hunt tips & ideas!

Easter Egg Hunt

It's a long-standing Easter tradition - and for most children, the highlight of the day (once all of the chocolate eggs have been eaten) - but making an awesome Easter Egg hunt is a lot harder than just finding good hiding spots! If you've got a group of little ones headed to your house for The Big Search, consider spicing up the hunt with these handy tips.

Pre-hide the eggs

When it's time to start the hunt, no one wants to hit the pause button while the host searches the garden for good hiding spots. More importantly, hiding the eggs before your guests arrive gives you a chance to optimize the hunt. Also, factor in the age of the searchers. If they're merely toddlers, the eggs should be fairly easy to spot, but if you're dealing with a group of 10 or 11 year-olds, try to add some challenge by hiding a few eggs in the low-hanging branches of a tree.

Think plastic

Plastic eggs not only allow you to push the hunt back as long as you'd like, they give you the chance to offer prizes to all of the participants. They could be filled with small toys or sweets.

Colour coding

Expecting a group of children that cover a wide age range? Separate them by egg colour. Blue eggs could be for under 5s and hidden in fairly obvious spots, while yellow eggs could be for children aged 5-8 and hidden a bit more thoughtfully. This not only prevents the older children from spoiling the fun for little ones, but it encourages the egg hunters to help each other out when they see someone who's down on their luck.

Puzzle it out

Easter egg hunts are all about finding treasure, so why not take that a little more literally and turn the party into a pirate treasure hunt? Draw up a treasure map, tear it up into a few or so pieces, then put those pieces into your hidden eggs. The children will have to work together to piece it together, which has the added benefit of turning the typically competitive day into a co-operative experience.