How to Make Healthier Easter Baskets

Easter baskets are usually filled with chocolate rabbits, marshmallow peeps, and jellybeans. But it wasn’t always that way.

This tradition dates back to medieval times when baskets of food were taken to church on Holy Saturday to be blessed and then enjoyed on Easter Sunday, according to Petal Talks from 1800 Flowers. But the basket sharing tradition is much newer. While it is exciting for kids to receive baskets of candy, all that sugar is not good for them. You can celebrate the holiday by making healthier Easter baskets.

Better Basket Fillers
While it is OK to include the traditional chocolate rabbit and colored eggs, don’t overdue it, reported Philly Voice. You can surround the sweets with fruit, nuts, and non-food items like coloring books, bubbles, or sand buckets filled with shovels and molds. You can get creative and use a sand bucket as the basket.

Instead of filling the basket with chocolate eggs or plastic eggs filled with candy, use real hardboiled eggs that your kids helped to decorate, or make eggs out of paper mache. Or fill plastic eggs with non-candy items. This is the perfect time to teach kids that every holiday doesn’t have to be filled with sweet sugary treats.

Healthy Ways to Celebrate Easter
While Easter egg hunts are fun for kids, there are other outside the Easter basket activities to explore, according to a blog on the Aultman website. You can substitute a fun activity instead like a trip to the zoo or a picnic in a park.

Another activity is to have an Easter scavenger hunt. Hide a clue in your child’s healthier Easter basket and then instead of getting small rewards from finding eggs, your child can receive a larger gift at the end, like a stuffed animal or a new game.

What’s more fun than a parade? Pioneer Woman suggests that you go to an Easter Parade. The Easter parade in New York City begins at 10 am and marches north on Fifth Avenue. Whether you want to wear an Ester Bonnet and participate in the parade or just watch,  it will be an enjoyable event for the entire family.

You can also just spend the day as a family doing traditional Easter activities like attending a worship service, having a home cooked brunch together – with healthy food – and then watch movies, do an Easter-themed craft, play board games, or just enjoy the time together.