Creative Kid Snacks

make fun of lunch!

Toy Story Alien Snack

by

Toy Story 3 is one of the highest rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review website my husband checks religiously before we go out to see a movie.  Kids love the excitement, adventure, and charming characters in this movie.  Even my little girls love  the Woody doll that Grandma keeps at her house, and both have stopped to play with the Buzz Lightyear in the toy aisle.

One of the funniest characters in the Toy Story movie, in my opinion, is the three-eyed alien.  I can just picture him saying, “Ooooh, the Claaaaaaw” like he does in the first movie.  I smile just thinking about it.  In case you’re not familiar with this character, he looks like this:

(image source)

We decided to make this guy for a snack the other day.  We used green grapes, white cheese, blueberries, and raisins.  Take a look.

Toy Story Alien Snack

Ingredients:

Green Grapes (approx. 20)
3 blueberries
white cheese sliced into ovals (could use string cheese, or sliced white cheese like provolone or mozaraella)
3 raisins

Directions:

Slice green grapes in half and arrange on plate in an oval shape as shown.  Slice one of the grapes into tall triangles to look like ears, and slice a small circle out of the cross-section of a grape to be the circle on top of your alien’s head.  Slice blueberries in half, and arrange on top of grapes as shown for a mouth.  Add 3 slices of cheese cut into oval shapes for eyes, and add raisins.  Enjoy!

Check Out the Rest of Our Kids Movie Snacks

Winnie the Pooh

Mickey Mouse

Lion King

Nemo

Shrek

Tangled

Monster’s Inc

Peter Pan

Up

Breakfast Made Beautiful

by

Here at Creative Kid Snacks, we make a lot of funny food and plate art.  Breakfast can be made to look like Hello Kitty, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a snail, a whale, or even Mickey Mouse.

Sometimes, however, a simple yet beautiful presentation is all it takes for your children to know that they are special and that you value spending time with them in the morning.  This breakfast would be sweet to serve in the morning after a sleepover party, or as a tea party meal.  Perhaps a Saturday morning family breakfast?  It would also be a great way to simply say, I am glad we get to spend the day together.

This breakfast features healthy, vitamin-packed fruits and protein-rich eggs.  Eating a meal like this for breakfast will help the kids to have the energy they need throughout the whole morning.

Ingredients:

Fresh fruit (grapes, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries)

Eggs and country ham

Cheddar cheese (optional for the scrambled eggs)

Directions:

Scramble eggs and diced country ham.  Top with cheddar cheese if desired.  Spoon into small bowl or ramekin in the center of a plate.  Slice grapes and strawberries in half so that they will lay flat on the plate.  Arrange them in a beautiful floral pattern around the eggs – or use any design you like.  The end result will be a beautifully appealing, healthy breakfast.

Health Benefits of this Dish:

Eggs are considered to be one of the most perfect sources of protein.  Protein is vital for kids to enjoy sustained energy throughout the day and build muscle as they grow.  Some people worry about the cholesterol found in eggs.  As I learned from this Cholesterol article by The Exercise Coach (where I love to work out), cholesterol is not what causes heart disease.  I was surprised to learn that it is actually sugar, which causes inflammation, which leads towards all of the problems related to heart disease.  It is far better for you to eat an egg than to eat a bowl of sugary cereal.  SOO much better!

Raspberries are higher in fiber than even blueberries.  They are a great source of antioxidants, and can even help to regulate your mood.  Check out this article to learn more.

Blueberries are another antioxidant-rich superfood, boasting a low glycemic index, and providing an excellent source of vitamin K.  Read more here.

Did you enjoy today’s snack?  Learn more about this blog here.

Under the Sea

by

“Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid is one of our all-time favorite movie songs.  It just gets stuck in our head every time we listen to it!

We’ve been in a bit of a whirlwind in life lately, so Sunday night we decided to veg and have a family movie night.  Our movie of choice was The Little Mermaid.

Today’s snack is inspired by Sebastain’s famous song “Under the Sea”.

"Under the Sea" kids snack with avocados, oatmeal, strawberries, and cheese. So fun! | CreativeKidSnacks.com
Create these fun little sea creatures using the following ingredients:

1/2 cup cooked oatmeal

1/4 avocado, sliced

1 strawberry

1/2 slick string cheese

3 grapes

goldfish crackers

1 teaspoon yogurt

Assemble:

Spoon your oatmeal onto the bottom of the plate for the ocean floor.

Next, arrange your avocado slices to look like a beautiful ocean plant.

Slice your strawberry in half so it lies flat on the plate and slice again into 6-8 thin strips to use as the crab’s arms and legs.

Slice 1/2 of your string cheese from the bottom into several small sections.  I think this little guy looks like one of Nemo’s little classmates.  (Now we are cross-referencing Disney movies!).

Slice grapes in half to lay flat onto the plate, and create little tails by slicing remaining portion of grape in half.

Add goldfish crackers.

**Optional: add little eyes to some of the creatures using a food marker

You are now ready to draw your waves at the top of the plate to complete the “Under the Sea” look.  I love to use the following technique:

If you enjoyed today’s snack, you’d also probably like our other Disney inspired snacks as well as our Nature themed plates!

(Sharing HERE)

Did you enjoy today’s snack?  Learn more about this blog here.

Butterfly Quesadilla + Weekly Kids Co-op

by

Butterflies are a sign of new life.  Spring always gets me motivated to get outside, enjoy nature, and celebrate it with our food, too!  My daughter has been very in to butterflies lately, and she has even requested a rainbow butterfly birthday party!  We’ve already made delicious fruit butterfly for a snack, and today’s butterfly will be a lunchtime butterfly treat.

Butterfly Quesadillas

Buttefly quesadillas by creativekidsnacks.com. Super easy and so fun!

I have two daughters.  I made one quesadilla with a 8-inch tortillas, (I love to use the whole wheat or multi-grain tortilla wraps), and cut it into 4 equal portions.  Place two quesadilla “wings” on your plate.

Create the body by slicing the end off of some beautiful green grapes and laying them on your plate to look like a body.

Thinly slice a baby carrot into strips to use for antennae, and place two blueberries on top of the carrots to complete the look.

If you feel so inclined, you could even use a food marker to draw a happy face on the top grape for your butterfly.

That’s it!  Super easy and so fun for the kids.

If you enjoyed this, check out our other animal snacks, as well as our nature themed snacks.  The kids will love them!  I know mine did!

By the way, I found another blogger who has another take on the butterfly quesadillas.  Check her version out here!

(Sharing HERE)

Did you enjoy today’s snack?  Learn more about this blog here.

 


Tangled

by

My kids love Disney’s Tangled.  If you’ve seen our Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Lion King, Monster’s Inc, “Up” and Peter Pan snacks, you can tell that we are big Disney fans.  Tangled is no exception.

Rapunzel from #Disney's "Tangled" - from creativekidsnacks.com

To create Rapunzel, I sliced 12-14 red grapes in half lengthwise.  I arranged them on the plate to look like her dress.  Making the dress first helps to scale the head, feet, and arms.  Next, cut a slice of white cheese (I used mozzarella) into shape for a neck, feet, arms and head.  I wasn’t ambitious enough to create hands with tiny little fingers using cheese, so I hid her arms behind her hair.  For her lips I used a tiny slice of a grape, two tiny currants for eyes, and a small slice of cheese for her nose.

Next, boil a small handful of thin spaghetti noodles until cooked.  You can make a quick cheese sauce for it if desired, or just use a little olive oil or butter and place it right onto the plate.

Finish the scene with some celery grass and a couple orange tulips made from carrots.

I loved the scene in the movie where Rapunzel feels the grass and the earth for the first time.  This lunch was pattered after that.

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to check out our other Disney snacks: Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Lion King, Monster’s Inc, “Up” and Peter Pan

(Sharing HERE)

Did you enjoy today’s snack?  Learn more about this blog here.

Butterfly

by

When Spring starts to peek around the corner after Winter finally ends, it’s fun to embrace the feeling of new life, warmth, brightness, and outdoor fun.  Nothing says new life to me like a butterfly!  The butterfly snack we have for you today is refreshing, super healthy, and beautiful for the kids to enjoy.

Butterfly Snack made of fruit from creativekidsnacks.com

Ingredients:

1 piece string cheese.  (You can also use just half of one, sliced lengthwise).

8-10 green grapes, sliced in half

3 strawberries

1 baby carrot

Directions:

To make this guy, simply place a piece of string cheese in the center of the plate.  Next, slice your green grapes in half and lie them on the plate as the outline of the butterfly’s two wings.  Slice strawberries and fill in the outline formed by the grapes.  Next, slice two round slices from the end of a baby carrot.  Slice two thin sticks, and slice a tiny bit off each stick.  Arrange antennae as shown, place two tiny carrot bits on the string cheese for eyes.  Enjoy!

Continue the Fun with a “READ.PLAY.EAT” activity

READ.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is such a classic story book!  Just like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?, The Very Hungry Caterpillar is an Eric Carle staple I’ll bet most of us have in our bookshelves (if not memorized) and read often.  I know it’s been a favorite for my girls.

The story is told of a caterpillar that hatches from an egg, grows, and eats and eats and eats until he is so full that he becomes big and fat.  He builds his cocoon, stays inside for more than two weeks, and becomes a beautiful butterfly.  It’s the classic metamorphosis story.

 

PLAY.

Create a “beautiful butterfly” with your child that they can play with over and over again.  Follow the simple steps shown below:

Butterfly Craft

My girls love to make these, and they only take about 5 minutes.  I love them because they aren’t messy, and they don’t involve too much skill on the parent’s part!  We have quite a collection, and my oldest daughter Grace plays with hers often.  She loves to hold the butterfly by the stick and swing him around to flap his wings.

It is also fun to make each one unique and different.  One thing we have done is make a butterfly for everyone in the family.  The kids have fun deciding which colors, patterns, and designs best reflect each person.  So fun!

 

EAT.

Make a healthy caterpillar for lunch!

Very Hungry Caterpillar: Creative Kid Snacks

Take a large strawberry and slice to create his head.  Next, create his eyes by using little bits of pineapple cut into circles and place sliced green jelly belly candies in front.  Form his body with green grapes , carrot feet, raisin mouth, and ham antennae.  He is walking on an oatmeal ground and taking in the cheddar cheese sun!

If you enjoyed this, check out our other animal snacks, as well as our nature themed snacks.  The kids will love them!  I know mine did!

(Sharing HERE)

Did you enjoy today’s snack?  Learn more about this blog here.

Joshua and the battle of Jericho

by

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

by

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.

 

READ.PLAY.EAT – Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes

by

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!

A Pair of Pair Snacks

by

Have a play date coming up?  Need a 45 second snack for a crowd?  Try one of these snacks!

Create two little flowers by peeling a clementine and arranging it as petals.  Next, slice some green grapes in half to make the stems, and finish with a ground of cereal.  I used Kix.  Easy and fun!

For something a bit more filling and nutritious, create little people out of a slice of cheese (I used organic Colby Jack from Costco), add blueberry eyes and a red grape mouth.  Place carrots on either side of the cheese to make their arms.  Use some sliced bananas for some funky hair, and finish with two little turkey legs.
There you have two fun little snacks that each take less than a minute or two to make!

More Play Date Snacks

Best of

Best Of

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.

Grab our button!

Creative Kid Snacks Button