Skip the Junk – Creative Easter Basket Ideas
With these creative Easter basket ideas, you can inspire creative play and avoid buying junk toys that will never be used again.
Easter was always my grandmother's favorite holiday. As a child, her enthusiasm was infectious. She would ‘ooh' and ‘ahh' over the colorful eggs, making us feel like little Picassos with egg dye. As a parent, I want to continue the joy I felt with this holiday, and one way I'm doing that is with creative Easter basket ideas. The Easter basket themes below make me excited to see the kids' faces on Easter morning.
Three Fun Themes – Creative Easter Basket Ideas
The following ideas are mostly great for younger kids. If you have an 11 or 12 year old or a teen, you might like this list of Easter basket filler ideas for older kids.
I've included a book idea with each theme as well, obviously, all of these depend on your basket size (and how much room the chocolate rabbit takes up.)
Spring Art Easter Basket Ideas:
Springtime is here! Sunshine and flowers are enough to inspire any budding artist and this Easter basket theme celebrates spring with goodies that get kids outside to do some spring art projects. They can go on a photo-scavenger-hunt, draw the flowers coming up in the yard, or make a “smash book” of all the things they love in the nature of their own backyard.
- Colored pencils – if you already have the basics, maybe try something fun like florescent pencils or watercolor pencils. Eboo has art supplies in adorable packaging and matching sketchbooks. If you get watercolor pencils, I recommend getting a watercolor brush pen to go with them.
- A Good Quality Pencil Sharpener (Getting a good one means you won't constantly break the colored pencil lead.)
- Watercolor paints
- Kid's Camera
- Spring Stamps Kit
- Sun Print Kit
- A Smash Book to add photos, leaves or drawings to.
Fun in the Garden Easter Basket Ideas:
As the ground thaws and bulbs bloom, we start thinking about the garden treasures to come with warmer weather. A Garden-themed Easter basket can get kids ready for digging, planting, and growing. Whether they're making a fairy garden or a veggie garden, these Easter basket fillers will be inspiring.
Tip: A friend told me that one of her kids' favorite Easter basket fillers was from the year they each got a strawberry plant in their basket as the main treat. They loved nurturing the plants over the next few months and harvesting the berries when they were ripe.
- Gardening Tools
- A Fairy Figurine for Your Garden or maybe a tube of small fairies if you're making a fairy garden in a pot.
- Wildflower Seeds for your area
- Tomato Growing Kit
- Sun Hat
- Kid Safe Lip Balm with Sunscreen
- Magnifying glass (Just beware that you go over rules of using it to start fires -says the mom with a little clan of future pyrotechnicians…)
- Bird Bell or other bird seed to attract winged friends
- A Bird Book or Nature Journal
Classic Play Ideas for Easter Baskets
Easter Basket fillers that get kids playing! Some childhood toys are just classics. This selection of treats for Easter baskets includes the kind of good old fashioned play that's always fun for kids.
- Play-Doh – if you don't have any yet, a few play-doh tools or cookie cutters go a long way towards fun.
- Sidewalk Chalk – I like the regular shape best, but they do make very cute egg shaped sidewalk chalk too.
- Silly Putty Eggs – so you can show them the magic of picking up newsprint, of course.
- Squirt guns
- Bubbles
- Jump Rope
- Easter Mad Libs – Or if you decided to get a jump rope, maybe a book of jump rope rhymes.
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Alissa Zorn is an author, and founder of the website Overthought This. She's a coach and cartoonist passionate about helping people overcome perfectionism and shame to build authentic, joyful lives. Alissa is certified through the International Coach Federation and got her Trauma-Informed Coaching certification from Moving the Human Spirit. She wrote Bounceback Parenting: A Field Guide for Creating Connection, Not Perfection, and is always following curiosity to find her next creative endeavor.