How to Create a Healthy Easter Basket

With childhood obesity on the rise, it's a smart idea to stock your kids' Easter baskets with healthy and fun alternatives to chocolate and candy. Follow these steps to create an Easter basket your children will love so much that they won't even miss the sweets.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Substitute healthy snacks for the sugary and chocolate-laden ones found in a traditional Easter basket. Give your children yogurt-covered raisins, dried fruit and homemade versions of the popular treats found in stores, which are much more nutritious for them.

2. Add books by your children's favorite authors, along with some fun Easter-themed bookmarks to their Easter baskets.

3. Fill the Easter basket with toys your kids can use while staying active outside, such as sidewalk chalk, bubbles, balls and sporting equipment.

4. Consider stocking the Easter basket with small gifts designed to encourage creativity in your children, such as paints, brushes, coloring books and crayons.

5. Arrange various kinds of seed packets with some gardening tools so your child can plant flowers or vegetables and watch them grow. Spring is the perfect time for your children to pick up gardening as a new hobby.

6. Pour healthy and homemade trail mix composed of a nutritious and low-sugar cereal, nuts, pretzels, bagel chips and a few jelly beans into plastic Easter eggs.

Tips & Warnings

• Consider adding snack-sized chocolate bars and other treats in small quantities to your child's Easter basket, instead of the full-sized ones.
• If you live in a warm climate, stock your child's Easter basket with small toys he can use at the beach or at the pool, such as sand pails and shovels, inflatable balls and pool floats.