Many of y’all have asked how we approach Easter after reading my post on having a mostly non-toy Christmas and I have been a bit hesitant to share. Because the thing is, we don’t do the easter bunny in our house and I definitely wouldn’t want anyone to feel as though I think their celebration is wrong if they do, we just made the decision not to.
Instead I chose to tell Scarlette that her Easter basket is a gift from us because Easter is a day of celebration and that we are celebrating the gift of grace that we have in Jesus.
The hard thing for me about making that decision was that I didn’t want our daughter to miss out on those childhood moments that are born out of the anticipation of things like discovering your easter basket on Easter morning.
In the end I decided that we could create that sense of anticipation while still honoring my personal convictions.
So on Easter morning we set up a scavenger hunt for Scarlette to find her Easter basket. I sneak-decorate her dresser in the middle of the night so she’ll see her first clue when she wakes up. Then we help her find the hidden eggs around the house to lead her to her basket.
She loves “treasure hunts” and is always asking me to draw her treasure maps. Last year I just put pictures of the different rooms in our house in the eggs. The hardest thing about doing it this year was trying to write clues that she could read by herself or sound out well enough to decipher them. She wants to read everything on her own right now but, you know, she’s four and so we mostly stuck to using clues with sight words or colors.
I’m really excited to see her joy tomorrow and to see how long it takes her to find her Easter basket (which is hidden in my closet right now and I think she knows something is up because she keeps trying to sneak in there while saying things like “I just needa get one wittle fing out of here, Mommy.”
And in case you were wondering what we put in her basket, she mostly always gets sidewalk chalk, bubbles, crayons, something sweet (candy eggs and honey sticks from the farm- she loves honey sticks!) and then something faith based.
This year she is getting a God Made Light floor puzzle* which is from the book God Made Light*. She loves puzzles and she and I both love that book. I actually got the puzzle in October and have been saving it for Easter because I hoard things like that.
So that is how it works in my house for now, we have a family basket hunt as a fun easter bunny alternative, but I’m sure it will change as she gets older. We are going to try our hand at dying eggs this year so everyone wish me a lot of luck on that because dye + Scarlette, y’all. My Easter will be filled with many prayers 😉
Wishing you a wonderful day of celebration!
(And because I am a blogger, here’s a cute image to pin/share!)
*disclosure: links are affiliates
