Originally Posted by Abigail:
I'm not a huge fan of easter baskets. Growing up with only had one or two for many years because my mom would save them and put them in storage until the next year. I use to work in retail and watched how many disney-themed and unusual easter baskets we would sell and it drove me nuts because every year kids got so many and they ended up in the garbage or broken.
You could be creative and color your own easter basket ahead of time as a project itself. Use gallon ice cream buckets or something that is close to a basket already that you may have. Ask for parents to donate a gallon ice cream bucket if you don't have enough.
As far as the easter egg hunts go, you could create a "find egg number one and it will tell you where to go for egg number two" kind of hunt for those who are old enough to follow easy words like "bed" and "fridge" to go to the bed to find the egg, etc. OR use pictures of where the egg is hid. You could make this a group effort, just make sure no one else is moving the eggs.
I like being creative, so I would avoid candy for most of the eggs. You can do stickers, temporary tattoos, little dollar toys (great ones from stationary dept. at walmart/target sold as "party favors"), a dollar bill. If you do money, you could do it as "daycare money" for when you take trips to the store with the kids they would have money on account to buy a dollar toy, etc.
Thank you everyone for the great ideas. Love the egg hunt idea! I did something similar during our pirate theme. I went shopping and got pails for the kids with grass. Bought a couple of things to put in it but mainly it will be for them to use during the egg hunt. There will be an egg #2 (filled with something) for each of the kids and so on. This will eliminate some kids getting more and others crying about it. I got easter books from the library that we will read all week. For crafts we will make a paper plate Easter bunny, a chick, and a basket. I will dye eggs and they will color and put stickers on them. To put in the eggs I got stickers, army men, little cars, tiny animals, pennies, jelly beans, little candies and animal cookies. I am also going to do the easter coloring page turned into a puzzle idea. Love all the ideas Thanks!!!!