Homemade Easter Baskets Kids Can Make with Recyclables

Every year, my preschool holds an Easter egg hunt for the students and their families. It’s a tradition that the kiddos and parents enjoy, but I must admit I always get a bit stressed by some aspects of the hunt. To problem solve around my concerns, the students and I made homemade Easter baskets! I’m biased, but I think they turned out lovely!

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Why we Made Homemade Easter Baskets

Some of you may find this a little silly, but Easter egg hunts make me a little anxious. Every family donates 12 filled Easter eggs for our hunt, but in the past not every child took home 12 eggs.

Yes, I know a lot of people may be rolling their eyes at me but it’s a concern of mine! For one thing, I’ve had parents get upset with me about this. More importantly, the kiddos get a bit upset when they can only find 3 eggs when a pal finds 20. During giant egg hunts with hundreds and hundreds of eggs, this isn’t that big a deal. For our little preschool class, it sure can be!

So, that little bit of concern led to trying something new.

I decided we’d turn egg cartons into Easter baskets for our little egg hunt. 12 spaces and 12 eggs seemed like a good solution to me (plus, we got to practice important math skills)! It didn’t turn out perfectly, but the children enjoyed the process of making their baskets!

How to Make Homemade Easter Baskets with Recyclables

Materials we used for our homemade Easter baskets

Empty cardboard egg cartons (1 for each child)
Acrylic paints
Ribbon
Hot glue gun

Prepping for the Easter basket-making fun

The prep for these baskets was super duper easy!

I just used scissors to cut off the egg carton tops and tabs. Then I grabbed everything else, and we dug into the activity!

Related: Easter Egg Art in Preschool

How we made our homemade Easter baskets using recyclables

I called the children over in small groups to paint their egg cartons. Some were very into the painting, while others weren’t (and that was okay).

I loved watching the process as the children chose paint colors and painted their cartons. None of the children stuck with just one color paint. I didn’t either (because of course I made my own)! We started out with pastel colors, but some children requested other colors so those were added to the mix.

Once the cartons were painted, we set them aside to dry. While they were drying, the children chose which ribbons to use as a handle. Once the cartons were ready, I hot glued the ribbons along the bottom and sides of each carton. Then we were ready for some egg huntin’ fun!

Related: Easter Egg Hand Prints

How Did Our Homemade Baskets Work Out?

Overall, I think they were great! The kids and I had fun chatting and painting together, and each child was proud of her homemade basket!

Most children went home with a dozen eggs after our egg hunt, although there were a couple with not enough. I think that’s because I didn’t explain the baskets to all of the parents ahead of time, so a couple of kids probably went home with extra eggs.

The only real problem we had was containing some of those super enormous Easter eggs! Our homemade Easter baskets were perfect for regular-sized eggs, though. The children also loved using their baskets to pretend egg hunt during centers this week!

I’ve received a few comments questioning the placement of the ribbon handle. Surprisingly enough, we didn’t run into any problems with baskets tipping and spilling everywhere. For younger children, I’d suggest running the handles length-wise instead of how did it.

Do your kids make homemade Easter baskets?

Preschool Lesson Plans and Resources for Easter

Below you’ll find two ready-to-go lesson plan sets, as well as one roll and count math pack. All three would be great to use around Easter with the preschoolers.

The lesson plan packs come with completed, printable lesson plans full of hands-on learning activities for preschool children. They both have book suggestions, whole group activities, small group activities, center ideas, and coordinating printables to use with the kids.

The Easter roll and count math pack has 16 differentiated game mats and 9 print-and-assemble math cubes. These games are great for preschool through early elementary.

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