Easter Baskets for Kids Made Easy!

Today I’m sharing how you can make the best Easter baskets for kids year after year! The best part? You don’t have to fill baskets with tons of stuff to make them special, and you can make Easter baskets that are both practical and fun! I’ve got some easy-to-apply, creative tips to make it easier and hopefully save you some stress.

Essentials to Consider When Assembling an Easter Basket for Kids

Have you heard of the “something to wear, something to read, something you want, and something you need” gift-giving mantra commonly discussed at Christmas time?

It also makes a great starting point for gift-giving for just about any major occasion. Christmas, yes, but also birthdays and Easter!

You might add in a couple extras – it isn’t a rigid rule that you must stick to four items or else you broke some sacred gift-giving law – it’s simply a starting point. Best of all, considering the “wear, read, want, need” categories always helps me eliminate the “junky” purchases.

Sure, that cheap little squishy toy might look cute, but is it going to end up in the trash or worse, cluttering the kids’ room or the countertops eventually? Then I generally refrain. Why spend our hard-earned money on something like that?

Are you a list person? I highly recommend making a quick list of something each of your kids would wear, read, want, need as the starting point of your Easter basket fillers!

Easter is a bright, spring holiday, and I like to keep those feelings alive when I’m choosing Easter basket fillers and the basket itself so I keep that in mind when paring down my list to final selections.

Before we get into the fillers though, we need to decide what the “basket” part of our basket will be.

“What do you mean, Buzzy? It’s going to be a pastel pink/green/yellow/blue shallow basket that I store all year long, obviously.”

Hold onto to your hat, I’ve got something else in mind!

Creative Ideas for the Easter Basket

Where will your easter basket fillers go?!

I seriously LOVE getting creative with this part. Don’t bother storing Easter baskets year after year – you can use a non-traditional Easter basket that is more useful and unexpected fun for your kiddos!

Here are some of my favorite “baskets” we’ve done in the past:

a baseball cap or a trucker hat (upside down, fill it!) I still HAD to put books underneath. I love books and my kids do too!
2.5 gallon buckets (Home Depot sells bright orange ones for less than $3 and my kids played with the buckets for YEARS after!)
an actual basket, but repurpose-able. No weird, long handles across the top. Something that can hold books or even blankets after! Local thrift stores & yard sales can be a great place to snag these if you’re into bargain shopping.
one of those trendy foam beach totes. I got one at my local Costco!
matching storage bins for use in their room or organizing a closet after Easter. We’ve done smaller ones like this set of 4 and bigger ones similar to this 2 pack!

One year, we just didn’t need anything in particular and instead of spending money on Easter baskets, I simply used our dining room table and carefully arranged a lovely little place setting for each child. What I would have put in an Easter basket, I artfully arranged at each child’s place at the table.

I also sprinkled a little confetti across the table, and placed some filled Easter eggs to look like a centerpiece across the middle of the table. The kids thought the table looked SO magical, and no one even mentioned “baskets.” They used paper grocery bags that I let them decorate with markers and stickers for collecting their Easter eggs later at the egg hunt!

How To Make a Family Easter Basket

I don’t always make each kid a basket. Sometimes I do a family basket! There’s something for everyone inside, and it usually has a theme!

Beach vacation family Easter Basket was pretty cool! It included a surfbrush (it gets sand off your your feet like MAGIC), a kite, garden tools/sand toys, X shot water blasters, towels for the kids, a new (but cheap) ball, Easter eggs filled with LEGOs, a maze box for each child, Yoto cards, and a mini book for each child. Oh and my favorite sugar-free and aspartame-free gum!

The tote was huge and I used towels to fill it up most of the way in order to have a better presentation:

Easter Basket Grass Alternatives

I don’t know why, but I am totally averse to spending money on easter basket grass. So I use things like crumpled up newspaper, towels, tissue paper, etc. Check out the inside of my Home Depot bucket basket:

Now I can just put my items in around it. If I am feeling extra festive and I want it to look extra nice, I use tissue paper darts like this (and yes, I reuse the tissue paper after the kids go through their baskets!).

Tissue paper works great as a base for the trucker/baseball hat Easter Basket idea:

Great Fillers for Easter Baskets for Kids

Now that we’ve covered fun ideas for containing (or not!) the Easter basket fillers, let’s get into what you’re going to put inside of them!

Unique Toy Ideas for Easter Basket Fillers

Foosbots (my kids love bringing these guys to play with whenever we stay in a hotel or go to a casual restaurant! Easy to tote around and the kids can play it just about anywhere with a flat surface!)
Left, Center Right Dice Game (my family can’t stop playing this fun, quick game!)
Clixo
Thinking Putty or Mad Mattr
Chip Prank
LEGO Building Set (there are tons to choose from, but I’ve got some Star Wars obsessed kids!)
Wooden tops
Hatching dinosaurs
Safari Toobs are always a big hit. This basket had a baby zoo animals set. It was adorableeeeee!

Art Supplies for Easter Basket Fillers

Scratch Boards (multi-packs like this make shopping for multiple kids so much easier!)
Puffy Clay (and a how-to book!)
Do-A-Dot Markers were my favorite for giving to my toddlers and preschoolers (and a fun free printable!)
My First Pencil
Scented Pencils (buy this pack & save some for stocking stuffers later this year!)
My favorite Watercolor Set for nature journaling!
We played with these 3-in-1 pencils at a friends’ house and I am so excited to be putting them in my 6-year-old’s basket this year! They are dry erasable!
I found cool rocket ship pencil sharpeners at a local toy store, but this pencil sharpener is pretty fun!
If you’re going the bucket route, Dewalt construction crayons and Home Depot pencils were a big hit with our jr builders!
ALSO – Home Depot gives away free building sets each month. You could totally get one (request it from customer service) and add it to your Easter Basket!
Playdoh never goes out of style!

Bookish Easter Basket Fillers

Favorite Easter Books for Kids
Yoto Player
Yoto Cards
A Child’s Book of Poems
Booklight!
My 2025 bookish-picks are: the first book in the DreamKeeper saga, a set of Human Body BrainBots Yoto cards, Usborne mini activity books, and a big how-to-draw book!

Wearable Easter Basket Fillers

Socks! Funny or practical
Temporary Tattoos
Lip balm
Piggy Paint
Baseball cap (you can use as the basket as mentioned before!)
A new t-shirt
Dress-up clothes (my preschooler is obsessed with this sparkly cape!)
These really cool things you can put on the spokes of your bicycle to make it light up!

What are your favorite Easter basket traditions? Are there things you like to include in your kids’ baskets every year? What part do your kids look forward to the most?!