We all love Easter, but do the kids know the origins of the holiday? Why not share these fun facts about Easter with the kids to help them better understand the reasons behind all the choccys!

10 fun facts about Easter for kids

1. Ever wondered why the date for Easter Sunday changes every year? The date is determined by the lunar calendar and the position of the moon. Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon that takes place on or after March 21st, which is said to signal the start of spring.
2. Easter is named after Eostre – the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Fertility, Dawn and Light. Eostre is also the name of a pagan festival that was celebrated in the spring.
3. The Easter Bunny also dates back to pagan times, where the hare was said to be the symbol of Easter, Goddess of fertility.
4. The first chocolate Easter egg was made in Bristol, UK in 1873 by Fry’s chocolate company.
5. The activity of painting Easter eggs comes from Ukraine! Ukranians call their decorated eggs a ‘pysanka’ which means ‘to write’.
6. The most expensive chocolate egg sold for £7000 in London on March 20, 2012. The egg was decorated with gold leaf and white flowers, and took three days to make.
7. Cadbury’s makes 500 million Creme Eggs every year! If they were all stacked on top of each other, the pile would be 10 times higher than Mount Everest.
8. The world’s largest Easter egg is 9.4 metres tall, 5.4metres high and a whopping 2267kg. Located in Vegreville, Alberta, Canada and called the Vegreville Pysanka, it is a sculpture made up of 3500 pieces of aluminium.
9. According to the Guinness World Records, the largest ever Easter egg hunt was held in Florida. 9753 children took part in the hunt on April 1, 2007, and found a total of 501,000 eggs.
10. There was an egg throwing tradition in medieval times where a priest would throw a hard boiled egg to the choir boys in the church. They would throw around and whoever was holding the egg when the clock struck 12 o’clock would keep it!

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