What’s Going in My Children’s Easter Baskets.

I shared a roundup of Easter basket fillers a couple of weeks ago here that mainly drew on items I’ve given to my children in the past that have gone over well. Specifically, the coloring rolls, Ooly art products, and Plus Plus tubes are forever hits and I’ve given them to countless little friends in our lives, too. But when I sat down to organize myself for Easter, I realized I needed some fresh goodies to add to the mix instead of repeating items they already own and love. Here’s where I landed:

+Books: for micro, this Egg Hunt lift-the-flap board book recommended by my sister; for mini, a couple classic Little Golden Books: Springtime Babies, Home for a Bunny, and The Story of Easter. More Easter book recommendations here, sorted by age. (We own many of these already!)

+To fill Easter eggs: Jellybeans, Cadbury eggs, and these tiny farm animals. Do your children love these little animal figurines as much as I do?! They are in constant use in our home. Micro loves to match them to pictures of an animal atlas we have, and they also could spend hours (!) playing with them in sensory bins or giving them “baths,” which can be as simple as giving them a bowl of water and a mound of shaving cream, but I’ve also gotten bolder (crazier?) and made “mud” by mixing water with cocoa powder that they then rinse off the animals.

+Activities: I bought mini an Usborne sticker book and a felt play book and micro an Usborne coloring book and a farm animal sound puzzle. He loves sound books, so I know he’ll get a kick out of this. I mentioned this earlier, but I also bought him the lacing sheep but may hold onto it as a gift for another occasion. I’ll also tuck a bubble wand and some play-doh in there.*

+Utility: To accompany the candy, I also bought them pastel toothbrushes (ha!) and those Yeti straw cups I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve hung onto to tuck in.

*A lot of the travel activities in this roundup would also make good basket fillers. Though we are still only watching Mass on our TV, when planning the Easter baskets, I applied the filter of thinking about what might be good for sitting in a Church pew. This magnetic Church book was still one of my best finds (ever) for mini, back when we attended Mass together pre-COVID. I also had a couple of religious board books and coloring books we’d use, and then the Melissa & Doug puffy sticker books were in heavy rotation, too.

**For this weekend’s activities, we have an excursion planned for Saturday that will consume most of the day, but then I printed out a bunch of Easter egg shapes here and bought some fresh pastel markers and stamping markers to decorate them with. I also bought a classic Paas egg-dying kit, so mini and I will work on that together. (How fun are these inexpensive egg cups to display our handiwork at a children’s table for Easter?) I’m holding onto these Easter sensory kits from my friend Home with Elizabeth to bring out on Easter Sunday while my sister, brother-in-law, husband, and I are hopefully still lingering around the table enjoying our Easter meal, but I can’t recommend her chocolate making kits enough! Mini LOVED this project — we had their Valentine’s Kit!

P.S. I did end up buying the Little English pajamas for both mini and micro, and both are now on sale! If you waited to the last minute, enjoy a nice price break!(

P.P.S. If you are panicking with nothing to wear on Easter, consider this $79 pink dress with these floral heels; this $129 Shoshanna (what a deal!); any white dress in your closet with an enormous floral bow; or, for something more casual, these spring flats with this perfect white top. And for your little one, look no further than this pair of $14.99 scalloped Mary Jane shoes. I love both colors! Sadly, mini has now sized out of the toddler shoe size runs here or I’d buy one in each color.

P.P.P.S. I loved all of your interesting reactions to this smattering of scattershot thoughts.