Easter Activities, Crafts, and Ideas for Seniors

Easter traditions aren't just for kids, they're also important to adults, families, and communities. Creative and fun ideas for Easter can be enjoyed by seniors at home, assisted living facilities, church, or in senior clubs and senior centers. Think beyond chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs to find Easter activities and Easter crafts for seniors.

Easter Ideas Just for Seniors

If you won't have family around for Easter and plan to enjoy the holiday with friends or you're in an assisted living facility, get in the Easter spirit with activities made just for adults.

Attend an Easter Church Service

Check with your local church to see what type of Easter services they offer between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Dress in your Easter best and enjoy a service or two. If you can't get to a church, reach out to one and see if they'll put on a special service for seniors at your facility or a local senior center. The act of gathering to celebrate is very meaningful to adults at Easter time.

Re-Pot Easter Lillies

Simple Easter decorating ideas include putting symbolic Easter plants in festive holiday pots. Lillies are one of the most symbolic flowers used at Easter because they represent the purity and hope of Christ's resurrection. If you can't get a lily or you're having a non-religious Easter celebration, you could also use symbolic spring flowers like tulips.

1. Purchase a potted lily from a local nursery or big box store's garden section.
2. Purchase a plastic or ceramic pot in a pastel color for Easter.
3. Decorate the new pot with paints to add designs like Easter eggs.
4. Re-pot the lily into your new Easter pot.
5. Use the re-potted plant as a decoration inside, outside, or as a table centerpiece.

Plan or Complete an Easter Scavenger Hunt

When you have a group of seniors with different ability levels, some can plan the Easter scavenger hunt while others can go on the hunt.

1. Find large Easter images and decorations along with beautiful Easter eggs and letters that spell out Easter words to hide around the halls of an assisted living facility, for example.
2. Make a list of the specific Easter items hunters must find.
3. Give each participant a small clipboard with their Easter scavenger hunt list.
4. Offer adult Easter prizes like potted plants, gourmet chocolates, or ceramic Easter decorations for those who finish first or anyone who completes the hung.

Host an Easter Brunch

Many families gather for a traditional Easter lunch or dinner, so hosting an Easter brunch for friends can easily fit into any busy Easter schedule. Have guests dress up, decorate and set the tables, and make a cute Easter name card for each guest. You can even have someone give a short Easter speech to make the occasion feel more formal and special. Serve egg and ham dishes to keep with the Easter theme.

Visit With Chicks and Bunnies

It's hard for many seniors to travel to a farm, but you can bring the spirit of spring indoors by working with a local farmer, small animal owner, or petting zoo. Schedule a time for some chicks and bunnies to be brought in so seniors can take turns holding and petting them or just watching them hop around a small enclosure.

Make Gourmet Chocolate Easter Eggs

Forget kids' Easter candy and use a gourmet chocolate Easter eggs recipe to make your own decadent Easter candies. You can use egg molds to help you get the egg shape, but this four-ingredient recipe makes a firmer dough you can easily shape with your hands. Look for filling flavors adults enjoy that kids might not such as lavender, pink peppercorn, or dark chocolate.

Plan a Secret Bunny Basket Exchange

Kids aren't the only ones who love receiving a basket full of Easter goodies. Take the idea of a secret Santa gift exchange and replicate it at Easter with a secret bunny basket exchange. Put the names of all participants in a bowl and have each person draw one name from the bowl. This is the person they will secretly create an Easter basket for. Secret bunnies can try to secretly deliver their gifts or exchange them at a secret bunny party. To keep the secret, don't write who the baskets are from on their cards.

Make An Easter Cross Door Hanger

An easy Easter craft that celebrates the religious meaning of Easter is an Easter cross door hanger. All you need are some bundles of dried twigs or raffia, string, ribbon, and scissors. You could also use pipe cleaners in Easter colors or long faux green stems.

1. Separate your twigs or raffia into two small bundles.
2. One bundle should be about two feet long and the other should be cut shorter so it's about one foot long.
3. Secure each bundle in its center with string.
4. Place the two bundles in a cross pattern and tie them together at the center with string.
5. Drape a strand of ribbon over the arms of the cross and hang.

Easter Ideas for Seniors and Their Families

Seniors looking for ways to connect with their families at Easter can participate in a variety of activities with or for their families.

Make Easter Cards

Make and send fun Easter cards to your kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids with a few simple craft supplies.

1. Fold a piece of cardstock in half to make a card shape.
2. Choose an Easter jokes then add the joke to the front of your card and the answer or punchline to the inside of your card.
3. Glue on some Easter bunny clip art to make the card more festive.
4. Deliver cards by hand or use greeting card envelopes to mail them out a few days before Easter.

Decorate Easter Cookies Together

Before your family comes over, bake up some easy sugar cookies in the shape of Easter icons like bunnies and eggs. If you've got older kids coming, they can help cut out and bake the cookies, but it will mean waiting for them to cook and cool before decorating. Make your own royal icing in pastel colors, then decorate all the cookie cutouts together. Have some little baggies or containers on hand so family members can take a few cookies home.

Make An Easter Scrapbook Page

Commemorate each Easter by making a family Easter scrapbook or an Easter scrapbook page for this Easter only. The whole family can help put together one page or each family member can make their own page to put together as one scrapbook.

1. Choose a piece of free printable Easter scrapbook paper or buy scrapbook paper to use.
2. Choose two to four printable scrapbook frames to add to your page. You can add images now if you have some printed or add them later.
3. Add a short Easter poem with letter stickers or by handwriting it with a nice pen or marker.
4. If you're making one page only, frame it to hang on the wall.
5. If you're each making a page, add them to a scrapbook.

Make Matching Paper Easter Eggs

Create a new family Easter tradition where all your family members have a matching Easter decoration to put out each year. This 3D paper Easter egg craft is easy for people of all ages and ability levels to make and looks great when it's finished. Every time you look at your 3D egg, you'll feel connected at Easter even when you're not together.

1. Choose one of the ten patterns for the paper easter egg templates for everyone to use, or you can each choose your own pattern.
2. Cut out each of your ten egg patterns. Glue two back-to-back so you end up with five double-sided paper eggs.
3. Stack your five eggs, then fold the stack in half and staple along the crease.
4. Spread the paper eggs out to make a 3D egg.

Host an Easter Movie Night

Grab all the comfortable chairs you can find or have family members bring pillows and mats to create a cozy movie theater in your living room or the common room at an senior living facility. Choose one of the best Easter movies to show at your Easter movie night. Make sure you have fun Easter snacks on hand like round white cheddar puffs that look like bunny tails instead of popcorn.

Easter Ideas for Seniors and Their Community

Seniors are great resources for their communities because they have knowledge and skills others might not have. Many groups such as preschools, Girl Scout troops, Boy Scout troops, and youth groups look for ways to interact with senior groups for acts of service, so see if you can partner up with one of them for an Easter activity.

Decorate and Donate Easter Eggs

Seniors can participate in egg decorating by coloring designs on eggs or using plastic eggs and adding stickers or glitter glue and putting candy inside. After all the eggs have been colored, the eggs can be gathered and donated to a preschool or community organization for a children's Easter egg hunt. In this way, seniors get to participate in a nostalgic tradition.

Make and Donate Easter Baskets

From paper mache Easter baskets to woven paper baskets, seniors can make a variety of unique children's Easter baskets that can be donated to schools, children's hospitals, or kid's clubs. You could even start an Easter angel tree where the names of kids in need could be added to the tree and seniors could each choose one child to make and fill a basket for.

Host an Easter Show

Seniors might enjoy a special day of listening to the piano, hearing Easter songs from the past, or participating in singing. Plan a show that incorporates performers from the community who play Easter music, lead an Easter sing-along, or read traditional Easter poems. Seniors can also be in the show or just be in the audience. Invite the whole community to watch.

Host a Spring or Easter Story Time

Reading with kids is rewarding at every age, but especially for seniors. Solicit a group of younger children who can come to an Easter story time at your facility or senior center. Choose some great Easter picture books and pair up each senior with a child they can read to. Seniors who can't read aloud could be paired up with older kids who can read to the seniors.

Have a Create-a-Basket Easter Hunt

Host a unique Easter egg hunt for kids in your community where they have to find specific items, rather than plastic eggs, to fill their Easter baskets. Hide things like Easter activity books, chocolate bunnies, packs of candy eggs, and decks of Easter playing cards around your facility. Give each child a list of items to put in their Easter basket and let them hunt for those items.

Easter at Every Age

Celebrating Easter is a great way to reminisce about the past and welcome a new season. You're never too old to enjoy celebrating holidays like Easter, so look for ways to keep Easter traditions going as long as possible.