Candy Alternatives for a Preschooler's Easter Basket

Forest has plenty of energy without refined sugar in his diet, so we dole out candy pretty sparingly. By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, we still had candy left from Halloween, and now the Valentine's candy is bleeding into Easter. With a whopping 3 scheduled Easter Egg hunts, Forest is all set for sugary sweets (probably until Halloween rolls around again). So what's a mom to do for an Easter Basket? Well, I'm glad you asked! 

1) Activity Books.  

Y'all might have noticed that we travel A LOT. And just like we limit candy, we also limit screen time. Activity books are a must for plane rides, restaurants, and on-the-go hotel room entertainment.  Our favorites are the dry-erase sort since they can be used over and over. Usborne has great options, as well as awesome sticker books. 

2) Games. Forest loves card games, so this is a great option for preschoolers. Uno, Skip-bo junior and spot it are great ones for this age. He also loves Bingo so when I saw this magnetic travel Bingo set I knew it'd be a great item for his Easter Basket. Again, great travel or restaurant activity. 

3) Art Supplies. I like to keep our art bench well stocked so I use Easter as a time to add or replace things we are running low on. This year its watercolors and sidewalk chalk. 

4) Movies. Forest is OBSESSED with movies. I can literally get him to do anything if the reward will be a movie. We use holidays to add to his movie collection (his favorite Christmas gifts were Wall-E and Cars 3). Disney-Pixar is always a safe bet so this year he is getting Ratatouille. 

5) Fun T-shirt. 

Forest loves any and all characters and also loves robots. Even though he's yet to see Star Wars, he loves R2D2, so I picked up this shirt at Baby Gap. (sidebar- my baby is almost too big for Baby Gap, and the other day I had to buy him pants from the big boy section because the 5Ts weren't long enough.   Waaaaaaaaah!) 

6) Books.  

Y'all know me. I always think books are a great idea. Forest LOVES anything National Geographic Kids, especially their reader series. He's super proud of himself that he's ready to graduate from Level 1, so I figured Easter would be a good chance to get him a Level 2. And of course, he loves sharks.

6) Lego! 

If you have a 3-5 year old, these little classic sets are perfection! They include all the pieces and instructions for 3 creations. Forest can do them all on his own and they've been such a great bridge from Duplo to the more advanced Lego sets. It's built his confidence so much to tackle more challenging directions. They come in 4 color sets, and he's bought 3 with his own money. I figure I'd get him the final set for his Easter basket to complete the collection. I also got him one of the bases to build on. An upcoming project is to change his train table into a Lego table, since the train phase seems to have unceremoniously ended about 2 months ago.

7) Band-aids. 

Because you can never have enough, and they have so many fun characters and designs to choose from. 

8) Plants, seeds, gardening tools. Forest is loving strawberries lately so I got him a little strawberry kit from the Target dollar spot. We'll see how well it does!  

9) Bonus goodies depending on their interests. Forest is all about robots right now and is already into everything Transformers. His grandparents took him to Toys R Us (RIP) and let him pick out anything and he picked a Rescue Bot (transformer series for preschoolers). He plays with that toy night and day so we got him another for Easter. We also just started swim season here in Houston so I got him some new swim toys. That's about it, which I think is plenty, considering I already had to buy him a bigger basket this year (and there was still some overflow)! 

I can't wait to see his face on Easter morning. My prediction is he will go straight for Ratatouille and the Rescue Bot and toss the rest aside;)

(Forest with his Easter Basket at age 2. Not much has changed.)