In my family, Christmas and birthdays are important, but we were never big on Halloween, Valentine’s Day, or Easter celebrations. The secular part of Easter passed with a new dress sometimes and a few chocolate eggs.
Now, I am rather fond of Easter. I love the beginning of spring, because it means that birds are singing, crocuses are blossoming, and gardeners are creeping outdoors to plant seeds. So I’ve made the change in the seasons and the renewal of life a little bit more of a focus than my parents did.
Why do you and your preschooler do for Easter? In our family, we love to dye eggs with nontoxic dyes. My very favorite dye is red cabbage. Take some red cabbage, chop it up, add a couple of tablespoons of vinegar, and boil with some water until the cabbage loses most of its color. Take the leftover water and use it to dye eggs. If you sit the eggs in the water overnight, they turn a beautiful pale blue color, almost the color of a robin’s egg.
I also love Easter for new dresses and hats. This is my grandmother’s tradition. At the time when children are soon going to need a hat to shade the eyes and a dress to play in instead of a snow suit, children get one of each as an Easter present.
There’s also an egg hunt. We look for fair trade chocolate Easter eggs, and these are a bit more expensive, so there aren’t that many to find. The garden is also damp, and the house has pet cats that can’t eat chocolate. I have reusable plastic Easter eggs that each hold a single chocolate egg. I hide these in our garden and they’re much more fun to find than the plain chocolate sort. I place little handmade wooden bunnies and chicks into one or two of them, perfect complements to my daughter’s collection of small Playmobil characters.
What do you do to celebrate Easter with your preschooler?