Healthy eating is a huge deal for us in our house.  One of the reasons I started this blog was to empower moms and dads to present HEALTHY food in creative ways to get the kids excited about eating it.  The habits kids develop at a young age stay with them as they grow older.

Kia, from Today I Ate A Rainbow, is an awesome mom who also believes in healthy eating.  I am so excited to introduce her Today I Ate A Rainbow Kit to you today as a powerful tool to encourage kids along the journey of trying new healthy foods in all the colors of the rainbow.

The kit includes a great magnetic chart naming lots of foods that represent the various colors of the rainbow.  Kids can see the items within each column and use the rainbow tracking magnets to mark off as they eat foods in each color category.  There are also other achievement cloud magnets included in the kit along with a cute book called “The Rainbow Bunch” to read as a way to introduce the fun new chart into your kitchen!

We received the kit from Kia, and I was so excited to see how my girls would like to use it.  I know my oldest loves to keep track of things on charts, and celebrate achievements, big and small.

We opened up the kit, and immediately the girls were interested in what was in there.  They looked through the book called “The Rainbow Bunch”, then they started punching out each of the magnets for keeping track of colors as they are eaten.

The magnets are thick and very high quality.  This product is meant to live in the kitchen and withstand lots of touching, picking up, and moving around!

We brought our chart to the fridge, and placed the colored shapes beneath the rainbow chart.  There are four different shapes of each color in the rainbow included in the pack, so that up to four people can keep track of what they’ve eaten.

Right away, the girls talked about what they had already eaten that day (for breakfast), and marked off the colors of foods they ate earlier.  They both looked at the chart and let me know that they (urgently!) needed to eat the rest of the colors.  Grace actually ASKED for spinach and blueberries!  These are two superfoods and I was thrilled to give them to her.

The chart held it’s appeal over the coming days and weeks.  One day, we decided to make these for lunch:

These healthy parfaits are made out of the following ingredients:

fresh organic strawberries

mango

banana

green grapes

blueberries

plain, organic yogurt (you could substitute Greek for added protein)

Cocounut Chia Granola (optional) – available at Costco

Slice and prep all of the ingredients on a cutting board.  As the kids prepare to build their own parfait, talk about the colors of the rainbow:

What is the first color of the rainbow? (Red)

What fruit are we using for our red color? (Strawberries)

Can you name some other red foods?

Which one is your favorite?

After each layer of fruit, one scoop of yogurt is placed into the cup.  At the end of the process, add one final scoop of yogurt and allow the kids to scoop their own granola on top with a spoon.  Since we were using PLAIN yogurt, the kids enjoyed the subtle sweetness of the coconut chia granola we found at Costco.  This stuff is delicious.  Read all about the health benefits of Chia to find out why it was a great addition to this snack.

After the snack was complete, the girls marked off the colors they ate on their rainbow chart.   Take a look!

Moms, I HIGHLY recommend getting a Today I Ate A Rainbow Kit for your own home.  Use PROMO CODE: “healthy” to get 25% your purchse!   This is a product that truly works wonders and may be that little motivation your child needs to finally start desiring those wonderful fruits and veggies.  It can’t be stressed enough that the vitamins, antioxidants, phytonutrients, and minerals in fruits and veggies REALLY DO make and keep us healthy.  Dr. Mark Hyman even wrote a book called “Eat Your Medicine”, suggesting that we can actually keep ourselves healthy by getting the necessary immune boosting power from the fruits and veggies we were designed to eat.  Check out his post called Eat Your Medicine: Food As Pharmacology and notice that he, too, suggests getting these medicinal benefits from a rainbow of fruits and veggies.

Win your own Rainbow Kit

Take a look at some other creative snacks we’ve made including super healthy fruits and veggies!

Rainbow lunch

Shapes lunch

Baa Baa, Black Sheep

Under the Sea

Butterfly Snack / The Very Hungry Caterpillar (one post)

Cucumber and Hummus Cupcakes

Grover

Snail Breakfast

Daniel Chapter 6 tells the story of Daniel, a righteous, God-fearing jew who served as a high-ranking government official under king Darius.  Daniel did his job so well that king Darius planned to set him in charge of the whole kingdom.  Some of the other government administrators working alongside Daniel decided to find a way to get rid of Daniel.  They went to king Darius and presented him with the idea for a new law that said the people could pray to no god but the king.  The punishment for doing so would be to be cast into the den of lions.

Daniel heard about the decree, but continued to pray to his God.  He did not hide himself as he did so, but rather prayed in front of an open window, and was caught and charged before the king.  Since the law could not be repealed, the king reluctantly had to allow Daniel to be thrown into the lions’ den.

The next morning, the king, after a restless night’s sleep, rushed down to the lions’ den to see if Daniel’s God, whom he had always served so faithfully, had saved him.  When the stone that covered the top of the den was rolled away, the king saw this:

Ingredients:

1 slice cheddar cheese

1 piece sliced ham

1 tortilla

1 baby carrot

3 cheerios

1 black bean

a strawberry

a blueberry

Directions:

Slice the cheese into thin sticks for legs, one square for lion’s head, and body and tail shape as shown.  Slice some small triangles into remaining section for Daniel’s hair.  Fold the sliced ham into a rollup, then slice thin sections and lay around the lion’s head as shown to look like a mane.  Use remaining ham for Daniel’s face.  Slice a black bean in half and use for Daniel’s eyes along with a half of a Cheerio.  Place head atop a body made of carrot sticks and a tortilla.  Add cheerios, strawberry bit, and blueberry sections as shown for lion’s face.