Creative Kid Snacks

make fun of lunch!

Healthy Christmas Snacks for the Kids

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Looking for some healthy snacks to serve this Christmas?

Get the kids into the Christmas season with these fun snacks and lunches!

#1:  Veggie Christmas Tree

Use cut celery arrange on an angle to create the shape of the tree.  Slice a baby carrot into wheels for the ornaments.  Cut a yellow pepper into the shape of a star for the top of the tree.
Create the trunk by rolling a slice of deli ham into a one inch wide roll-up and folding it in half.  Slice the bottom off to create a straight line if you wish.
My favorite part of this snack are the snowflakes.  I created them by slicing some string cheese into wheels, then carefully slicing little triangles out of them (from the outside in).
Serve with a little ranch for dipping, and enjoy!
(My kids ate this whole snack up!  So much good fiber and protein!)
Variations:
Use cucumbers for the tree (sliced in “sticks”)
Use a carrot or two for the trunk and cherry tomatoes for the ornaments
Use yogurt for the snowflakes

#2: Santa Panini Sandwich

I made this snack by first making a turkey and cheese panini sandwich on our Cuisinart Panini grill.

After placing it on the plate, I spooned some cottage cheese around the bottom of the plate and left a little gap where Santa’s mouth would be. Note: the sandwich is placed with the rounded side of the bread down.

Next, I created his hat and nose with some strawberries.  Finish the look of the hat with a little whipped cream and finish with some raisin eyes.

This one was a favorite!

#3: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I made Rudolph out of a peanut butter sandwich.  Leave the round (top) part of the bread in tact, then slice into an oval for the main part of the body as shown.

From the remaining portion, slice four thin legs and a head.  Think of cutting the shape of a shoe for the head.  Add a raisin eye, a strawberry nose, and two pretzel antlers.

A little pine tree made of sugar snap peas completes the look of Rudolph’s flight through the air!

#4: Cottage Cheese Snowman

Meet one of the first creative snacks ever created.

Our sweet snowman has a cottage cheese body , raisin eyes and buttons, 1/2 a baby carrot for a nose, and celery sticks for arms.

Scoop the cottage cheese onto the plate with a small spoon into three circles.  Slice your baby carrot in half and add for his nose.  Place his eyes and buttons on, and finish with arms.  Done!

You can’t get much healthier than this for a festive winter snack!

Variations:
Use pretzels for his arms to look more like sticks
Use yogurt for his body
Use blueberries for his buttons

#5: Holiday Wreath

My daughter Grace asked for a wreath for lunch.  I decided to go with celery for the greenery as opposed to lettuce or cucumbers, which, depending upon your child’s taste buds, you could definitely use.  My girls love celery, so I went with that.

Next I added carrots and grapes sliced up for the “berries” of the wreath.  You could use cherry tomatoes, red bell peppers, or even strawberries here, but I used what I had on hand.

The bow was made out of a slice of ham.  I cut one full slice from the deli into quarters, and rolled each up as big as I wanted it to be for the parts of the bow.

Once all that was done, I snapped the photo.

Before I served it, though, I had the idea to add some background “snow”!

This is how I served it, and, as usual, it was gobbled up!

Which version do you like better?  I really can’t decide.  This second one is definitely more filling for lunch, though, and the girls do love their cottage cheese.   So for that reason alone, I know my kids would vote version 2!

(Linking up HERE)

4 easy play date snacks

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I have some easy, healthy, and fun snacks for your next play date.

Now that the weather is cooler, we will be hosting more play dates here at the house as opposed to meeting our friends out at the park, pool, or outside entertainment.
I thought I’d share a few ideas of healthy and cute foods to put out for the kids to inhale munch on as the moms chit chat!

#1: Peanut Butter Dipping Fun 

  Provide some peanut butter for dipping and some peanut butter friendly items like celery, apples, graham crackers, and bananas.  Each kid can get their own little cup of peanut butter too – those individual ones would be great, and they could collect their dipping stuff from the main serving platter too!

#2: Skewers

 Just about anything served on a skewer is irresistible to the kids!
I made these to include awesome vitamin packed fruits as well as protein rich ham and cheese for calcium.
Collect items for your skewer, such as grapes, pineapple, strawberry, ham, string cheese chunks, etc.  Arrange in an adorably cute pattern.
Cut the pointy end off of the skewer, and serve!

#3:  Fruit Flowers 

These happy little flower snacks take less than a minute to throw together.
With a clementine orange arranged as flower petals, grapes as a stem and leaves, and some cereal beneath it all, a sweet and healthy snack is ready for as many as you need!

 

#4:  Happy Friends

 Create some happy little friends using some rolled up turkey or ham for legs, a slice of cheese for a body, carrot arms, banana hair, and blueberry eyes with a grape mouth.
You can make these guys with anything you have on hand.  You will be a hit with your kids’ friends by offering them such a fun little friend for a snack!

(Sharing HERE)

 

Mike Wazowski (2 versions)

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Monsters Inc is one of our favorite Disney Movies.  Mike Wazowski is one of the hilarious characters who works with Sulley.  I have two versions of Mike Wazowski to make for your Monsters Inc fan!

Do you recognize this guy from Monsters Inc.?  Mike Wazowski is made of a honeydew melon sliced and cored.  His eye is made of yogurt, a kiwi, and a blueberry.  His mouth is also made of bluberries.
Monsters Inc is one of the girls’ favorite Disney movies.  It’s one of those that they always watch from start to finish, never once losing interest.  It’s always great to have a few movies like that in the stash!
. . .
Here is another version of Mike, this time with sugar snap peas for the green part of his eye.  I thought that kiwi went better with the yogurt and other fruit in version 1, but loved the green color the sugar snap peas provided in version 2.
I sliced him up in order to make the eating part easier for my little Disney fan.
I can’t WAIT for Christmas season!  I have some really fun posts coming up for you with some ideas for fun snacks to get the kids in the spirit!  Not that they need any help with that!
(Sharing HERE).
What is your child’s favorite Disney movie? 

 

ABC Lunch

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Is your child learning the ABC’s?  How about their vowels?  Today I have a lunch for you that is inspired by a story and that is perfect for teaching the ABC’s, practicing vowels, and spelling.

Slice a banana into 21 sections, and then find something else, like celery or perhaps apples or graham crackers, to use for your vowels.  Next, find a plastic bag, snip off a tiny piece of the corner, and fill with several tablespoons of peanut butter.

Before piping the letters onto each space, work the peanut butter around in the bag using your fingers until it softens a bit.  It will come out much easier that way.
Before eating, here are a few things you can do with your child:
a. Sing the alphabet song, of course!
b.  Ask him to point to the first letter in his name.
c.  Ask her to spell her name by pointing to each letter.
d.  Ask him which letter makes the sound __(fill in the blank)___.
e.  Point out the vowels and explain that there is a vowel in every English word.  (“Y” is also used as a vowel in certain cases)
f. Sing the “I like to eat apples and bananas” song to practice your vowel sounds.
g.  Use your imagination.
Now, read and play!
Screen shot 2013-01-22 at 2.05.44 PM
How Rocket Learned to Read is an adorable book about a dog who meets a little bird who happens to be teaching a class right in his favorite napping spot.  Rocket and the bird meet up every day, and the bird teaches Rocket his letters, reads him stories, and inspires him to love learning.  When winter comes, the bird flies south for the winter, leaving Rocket to practice his letters and wait for the bird to return.  They develop a beautiful friendship, and Rocket finally learns to read.
PLAY.
Take a few moments and practice your letter sounds with those magnetic letters that most of us have on the fridge.  Right now, my daughter is at the beginning stages of reading and knows her letter sounds well.
Use a simple word like “cat”, and practice moving new letters in front of the “at” and ask your child to sound out the new word.  Since they will be so similar to each other, it will be fun for your child to successfully read so many words in a row.
Try the same thing with different word endings, or by moving vowels in and out of the middle of simple words.
Kids will love this tasty alphabet snack!
(Sharing HERE)

Joshua and the battle of Jericho

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Joshua 6:1-27 tells the story of the great city of Jericho with walls so high and fortified that no adversary could break through.  God called the Israelite leader Joshua to march around the city with the priests blowing their trumpets of ram’s horns in front of the ark of the covenant for six days.  On the seventh day, they were to march around the city seven times and all of the Israelite people were to shout.  When this happened, God told Joshua, the great walls of the city would come crashing down, and, in this way, the Lord would give the city over to His people.
Read this story with your child, or read the story from the children’s bible (HEREis the one we use), and then create this story for lunch!
Build walls using grapes sliced in half, laid flat side down onto the plate.  Next, slice baby carrots in half lengthwise and lay a couple of them down to be the Israelites.  Thinly slice the other half of the baby carrot and cut to shape for arms and legs.  Complete the scene with some green celery grass below the city walls and add two small triangular slices of pineapple for the priest’s horns.  A nice sun in the sky completes the picture.
(By the way, once I saw the photo, I realized that the Jericho guy looks like he’s smiling . . . oops!  That was supposed to be a round mouth saying “oh no!”)
Once this lunch was complete and we retold the story, Grace “tore the walls down” as they fell in the story.  She had fun with that!
Finally, I sliced up the “grass” below the city for her to dip into her peanut butter.
Variations:
Build the wall with other fruit like strawberries, bananas, or blueberries.
Use pineapple for the sun, or cheese for the trumpets.
Enjoy!
Check out our other bible stories HERE.
(Linking up with these fine parties)

Healthy Halloween Snacks

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Healthy Halloween Snacks are hard to come by sometimes.  For those of us who are into providing healthy Halloween Snacks, here are two to try.
Create a spooky spider in his web!
Peel string cheese and lay it on the plate in a pentagon shape starting on the outside layer.  Move inward, creating another smaller pentagon within the first, and so on.  I ended up with four layers of pentagons.  Next, lay additional string cheese at the junctions of the different corners, and anywhere else you’d like, until you have what looks like a web!
Next, slice a grape in half for the spider’s body.  Thinly slice the other half of that grape plus half of another one to create the spider’s legs.
Finally, add some raisin eyes, and he is finished!
This is the second of two snacks for the season I’ve shown you.
Here is the other healthy Halloween snack for you to try!
Read all about him HERE.

 

Ghost

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I have seen SO MANY adorable Halloween treats out there on the web, but how about a healthy Halloween Snack?

Create a friendly ghost for your child’s snack by spooning some cottage cheese into shape onto a plate.  Next, give him some eyes by slicing a baby carrot into two circles for the background of his eyes and another half circle for his mouth.  Finally, place two little raisins atop the carrot circles to complete the look of his eyes.

We don’t really celebrate Halloween in our house, as you may have guessed given the rest of the content of CKS, but I wanted to put a cute, cartoon-like spin on a couple of fun snacks for the season.

Stay tuned, because I have another healthy treat for the season coming in the next post!

(Sharing HERE)

 
 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

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Today’s post features Eric Carle’s beloved Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see? story book as well as a learning activity and snack to go with it!
This comes from a series I been calling Read.Play.Eat.  Take a look at the snacks and learning activities I shared for the following children’s books:
Blackout
It Could Always Be Worse
Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes

READ.

By Eric Carle
This is a story I’ll bet almost all of us have in our libraries!  I remember hearing this book read to me in kindergarten.
Read this story to you child.  Allow them to “fill in the blanks” as you pause when each new page comes.  They will quickly learn to name each new animal as it shows up.
PLAY.
Make some simple animals using a sharpie and some white cardstock.  I simply drew freehand from what I saw in the book.
Go through the story, and have your child color each animal as they appear.
Next, make some “puzzle pieces” by cutting the animals in half.
The goal will be to match each animal’s front to its back.
It will be all the easier with the colors each animal has.
Your child will be delighted to do a puzzle that he or she made themselves.
Another activity to do once the animals have all been matched together is to line them up in order of appearance in the story.
First, see if your child can do it from memory, then “check your answers” by using the book.  If they made mistakes, have them re-arrange the order to learn the right way.
So much fun!
EAT.
Create the Brown Bear of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” by simply making a peanut butter sandwich, and slicing four legs.  The natural shape of the bread is very close to the shape of the bear in the illustrations in the book.
Next, cut a circle from another piece of bread.  Use two half raisins for the eyes, and some halved almonds for his ears and nose as shown.  So easy!

Lion King Lunch

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“The Lion King” is one of my personal favorite Disney movies of all time.  We just got a copy for Christmas and the songs “Circle of Life” and “Can you feel the love tonight” are stuck in my head for hours every time we watch it!  Simba and Mufasa are the heroes of the story, so today are creating a lion lunch in their honor.
Create grown-up Simba or Mufasa with some rotini pasta with marinara sauce for the mane, a slice of colby jack cheese for his face, and, strawberries cut in a triangle for his nose and two thin strips for his mouth area!  Add two raisins for his eyes, and you are done.
Serve with some grapes on the side, and enjoy!
Check out our other Disney inspired lunches: Mickey, Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc., Up, and Winnie the Pooh

(Linking up HERE)

 

READ.PLAY.EAT – Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes

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READ.

By Margie Palatini

Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes is an adorable story about a fox trying to reach grapes high up in a tree and getting all of his friends to help him.  He thinks he is the smartest of all the creatures in the forest, so he is boss and tells all of his friends how they are to help.  Even though each individual friend could have done the job itself using its own skills, the fox, in his pride, insists on telling everyone what do to.  After all of the failed attempts by the fox and his crew, the friends get the grapes on their own and the fox goes away empty handed and ashamed.  It’s a really fun read, and the kids start to predict what will happen as each animal friend comes into the picture.
PLAY.

 

Create an obstacle challenge for your kids to figure out.  


We chose to place a shoe up in a tree and tell Grace that it was her responsibility to get it down (with her own hands) and to figure out how to do it.  Just like the fox did!

 

As you move from left to right across each row, you can see the order of events for how she went about getting the shoe.  (Thanks Daddy for the shoe!)

 

Right away she asked her dad to stand near the tree so she could climb on him.

 

When asked how she would get up on dad’s shoulders, she went down to the picnic table and asked us to bring it over as a way for her to get higher.

 

She realized she had to ask Dad to sit down so she could climb on his shoulders.

 

When he stood back up with her on his shoulders and his feet on the ground, they still were not tall enough.  


Finally, she asked Jesse to stand on the picnic table seat so they could reach.  Success!

 

EAT.

You can create the story for lunch by using a slice of summer sausage cut into a triangle, 4 sticks, and two crescent shapes to make the fox.  Next, make a tree by slicing a peanut butter sandwich as shown.  Use some cut celery for the ground and a couple of the celery leaves for the tree tops.  Finally, add the grapes, and your child will be delighted to see the story come alive!

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Copyright Note

Please feel free to use any of these ideas with your children at home, school, church, or anywhere you are inspired to make fun of lunch. If you would like to share a post on a blog or site, you may use one picture so long as you include a link to the original post. Please do not re-post the whole article or distribute printed-out content without written permission from the original author.

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