A Mom’s Step-by-Step Guide to Coloring Easter Eggs

This happens to me every year when the kids and I are coloring Easter eggs, and I bet I'm not alone.  

Somebody quits halfway through the process, and Mama ends up carrying the load.

I don't 'spose this should come as a surprise to me since it seems to repeat every year, and it also applies to other activities around the house like picking up toys and putting away laundry.  Sometimes kids have trouble seeing a task all the way through to completion.  But this will be the year of change, I say!

Maybe the reason the kids move on to other activities halfway through the coloring process is our friendly little contest to turn out the darkest, most vibrant-colored egg.  That takes some soaking, sitting, staring, and waiting.  It's a test of patience and sometimes it makes us want to take a snack break for a Cadbury Egg with pretzels dipped into that delicious middle part, and the next thing we know we've forgotten all about the soaking purple, green, and yellow eggs.

How can we all stay focused on this egg-coloring process?

Maybe this step-by-step guide will help.

1.  Buy classic coloring kits.  If you happen to be into all the variations of egg-coloring kits and they work for you that's fantastic, but I rebel against the tye-dye, marble, and glitter.  I want those eggs to get as dark as possible with nothing fancy interrupting that gorgeous aqua-green that reminds me of coloring eggs with my sister when I was seven.  Classic is good!  And there is less mess and less room for error.

2.  Put snacks within reach. Start with oranges and apple slices, and promise some malted milk eggs, Starbursts, and perhaps a Peep after producing four more dark-colored and vibrant eggs.  It keeps them seated, and focused on the next snack in addition to the egg bath.

3.  Play music and sing.  Most of us have smart speakers now, and it's easy to tell Alexa to play some music that will pump some energy into the whole process.  Like Mix 106!  With music filling the kitchen, staring at that egg while waiting for it to get darker and darker becomes a daydream and not a test of surviving boredom.

4.  Play games.  Break out the games that don't require the kids to get up and start moving around, because once they do they're gone.  Things like Tic-Tac-Toe, and maybe an Easter Bunny version of Hangman, and others that you can play with paper and a holiday pastel colored pencil.

5.  Only boil what you will eat.  Coloring eggs is so much fun that it's easy to keep going until you've got four dozen.  But can your family polish off that much egg salad?  My kids will eat a plain hard-boiled egg dipped in salt on the Monday after Easter, and then they're done.  That's a lot of egg-eating pressure on Mama.

Oh, and don't feel like you have to use up all the dye mixture because no person in the history of the world has ever done that, and if you do you'll probably also have about four thousand eggs to store.

There's always the plastic eggs!  If you're filling those this weekend, have the music going and snack on some of the candy as it's going in, and it will be a fun time.  Happy Easter.