Creative Kid Snacks

make fun of lunch!

Downhill Skier

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Do you love skiing?  Have you taken a family trip to Colorado to hit the slopes this year?  Even if you haven’t gotten to go in person, celebrate the fun of winter sports with this cute little lunch.

skiier

Cottage chesse is a favorite in our home.  Any lunch with cottage cheese as one of the elements is sure to be gobbled up quickly!

To create this lunch, take a baby carrot and slice it in half lengthwise so it lies flat on the plate.  Chop off one of the rounded edges from the bottom.  This will be your skier’s body.  Next, slice the other half of the carrot you didn’t use for the body into small sticks to serve as the arms and legs.  Create the look of bended knees by cutting what would be one leg in half and laying on the plate to look like it is bent.

Take some thinly sliced celery and cut to desired length for skis.  Add two small pretzel sticks for the poles.

Now, take a spoon and spread the cottage cheese onto the plate to look like it is sloping upward on one side as a mountain would.

I decided to add a fun touch in the background by using some string cheese for a chair lift.  Use a small rounded edge of a carrot for a little guy, and give him one leg (that you are seeing from the side), and one ski.

Give each skier a cap to keep warm.  I used turkey breast cut to shape with a little puff of cottage cheese on top.

Your kids will love this protein and fiber filled snack.

Check out some other winter snacks:

Cottage Cheese snowman, Snowman Popcorn Cups, Snowman Milk Chugs, Snowman party poppers.

(Linking up HERE)

Angels we have heard on high

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This healthy and fun little snack celebrates the birth of Jesus as recorded in Luke 2:8-14.  Read the story of the angel choir appearing in the heavens to announce that baby Jesus had been born, and then make this snack to continue the celebration!


“And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.  And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
 “Glory to God in the highest,
    and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”  

Luke 2: 8-14

 

Ingredients:

2 hard boiled eggs
2 baby carrots
1 t cottage cheese
2 raisins
1 strawberry
1/s banana
1 slice white cheese
1 t miracle whip or mayo

Directions:

Slice hard boiled eggs in half lengthwise.  Carefully remove yolk.  Place one half yolk onto top corner of plate for moon.  Place remaining yolk from the 2 eggs into a small bowl and mix with mayo.  Spoon mixture into a zip baggie with a corner sliced off, and set aside. 
Slice bottom off of egg white halves.  Use sliced off section to cut triangular arms/wings for the angels.  Arrange all on the plate as shown. 
Slice baby carrots in half lengthwise.  Slice in half again width-wise.  Use for shepherd’s bodies.  Slice one of the carrot quarters into thin strips for the shepherd’s arms and legs and arrange on the plate as shown. 
Slice little rectangles with tiny triangles sliced out for sheep’s legs.  Top with 1/2 teaspoon of cottage cheese each to look like sheep bodies.
Top angel’s bodies with banana slices for heads, then add raisin eyes and thin strips of strawberry for a smile.  Now take piping bag with egg mixture in it and pipe hair and halo for each angel. 
Use a pizza cutter to slice remaining slice of white cheese into lots of tiny pieces.  Sprinkle around the plate to look like stars.

Nutritional Benefits of this Snack:

Eggs are full of benefits, including being rich in protein, vitamin B, and omega-3’s.  See more about health benefits of eggs here.
 

 
 


Snowman Party Poppers

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Are you having a winter party?  Tis the season to celebrate the snow with a cute snowman snack I like to call Snowman Party Poppers.
We’ve already introduced you to the Christmas Snacks we like to call Grinch Party Poppers and Santa party poppers; so today it’s time for the snowmen!

 

These guys are made of mozzarella cheese, blackberry jam, pretzels, and fruit – a winning combination of flavors if you ask me!
Here’s how to make your own.
Ingredients needed (for 15+ poppers):
-large chunk mozzarella cheese – the largest size available at most grocery stores
-pretzel sticks
-2-3 tablespoons seedless blackberry preserves (may substitute other seedless preserves)
-grapes (or other desired fruit) for hats
Assembly:
Step 1:  Cut mozzarella into groups of 3 chunk sizes.
Start with deciding the size you’d like the head chunk to be and cut those equally.
Next, cut slightly larger chunks for the middle, and repeat for the bottom.
Tip:  think about how much cheese would be desirable to eat for one child in one sitting.  Make sure your bottom chunk is not so big that it would be too much for the average person to want to finish.
Step 2:  Fill piping bag or plastic baggie with corner sliced off for piping with blackberry preserves, and pipe faces onto smallest chunks of cheese.
 The fruit and cheese combo is classic and tastes fantastic.
The preserves, once piped onto the cheese for faces, stay in place very well, and they should not dribble as long as you do not make the dots too large.  I used the smallest tip on my piping bags.
Step 3:  Build Snowmen
Because they stay together so well, these guys don’t even require a toothpick!  If you are serving them at a party, however, I would use one in order to be able to quickly grab one from a serving plate.
Layer your three chunks of cheese, largest on bottom, and work up.  Slice the bottoms off of as many grapes as you have snowmen and add to the top to look like hats.
Insert toothpicks and you are ready to go!
(Sharing HERE)

 

 

Grinch Party Poppers

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The Grinch is one of Dr. Suess’ most beloved characters, and at Christmas we love to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.
Just like we love to make Christmas trees, wreathes, snowmen, Santa, and reindeer for snacks this time of the year, we also love Mr. Grinch.

Today’s snack is a perfect finger food to put out for the kids at a Christmas party.
These would also be perfect for a Christmastime sleepover, featuring popcorn, the Grinch movie, and these scrumptious little poppers.
Healthy, cute, and super fun, you know these little guys will be a hit.
Here’s how to make them.

Step 1: Collect your ingredients and assemble Grinches

 
(Depending on how many Grinch poppers you would like to make, you will need that many of the following):
 
-slice of white string cheese (at least 1/3 inch thick)
-strawberry
-banana slice (at least 1/3 inch thick)
-green grape (with bottom sliced off so it lays flat)
-melted chocolate. (1/2 of a Hershey’s bar, broken into pieces and microwaved until melted, stirring at 20 second intervals will be plenty to make up to 25 poppers)
 
Assemble each Grinch by sliding each piece up a plastic toothpick.  I get mine from the dollar store.  They come in a package of assorted colors with little hearts on the top.  They are the perfect size, and not too sharp for the kids to eat off of.
 

 Step 2: Melt Chocolate

 
 Depending on how many poppers you are making, melt the appropriate amount of chocolate.  I used a simple Hershey bar in this recipe.

1/2 of a Hershey’s bar, broken into pieces and microwaved until melted, stirring at 20 second intervals will be plenty to make up to 25 poppers.

  Step 3: Pipe Grinch faces

Place your melted chocolate into a piping bag with a very small tip attachment; 
or do it the easy way by using a ziploc bag with a tiny snip off of one corner to pipe your faces.
Make 2 eyes with frowning eyebrows above them.  Next, make a wide smile with bumps and a little point at the bottom middle.

Step 4:  Chill, serve, and enjoy!

 
Chill in the refridgerator for at least 15 minutes.
 

 My little girls LOVED these guys.  I made about 10 of them for today’s post, and they had to be cut off after 4 each!  (They still hadn’t had their lunch yet)!
 
TIP: Pipe Grinch faces onto grapes and chill in advance if you want to work ahead and prevent the rest of the ingredients from being out in the air too long.
 
(Sharing HERE)
 
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Baby Jesus in the Manger

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“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  Isaiah 9:6
The true meaning of Christmas is awesome story of God sending his son Jesus to be born into the world, in a humble stable, to save the world from sin.  
I’ve always loved the way Linus tells the story in the Peanuts Christmas special!

 

 

I’ve already shared some of the festive Christmas snacks I’ve made for my kids to get them excited about the season (as if they need any help with that)!  However, the real reason we celebrate Christmas is because Jesus was born!  The miracle of His birth and the story of God’s amazing love for mankind still blows me away. 
Luke 2 tells this awesome story.  Read that or read about the birth of Jesus in the Children’s Bible.  
After that, make this lunch together.

Baby Jesus is a baby carrot sliced in half to lay flat.  He is lying in a manger made of a peanut butter sandwich.  He is wrapped in swaddling clothes of string cheese peeled and wrapped around him.  His eyes are raisins.  The stable is made of carrots sliced to lay flat, and the hay and the star are made of organic colby jack cheese.  I use a pizza slicer to create the thin strips of cheese to look like hay.  The support for the manger is celery shaped like an “x”.

As a finishing touch, Grace and I sang “Away in a Manger” together right before she ate!

(Linking up HERE)




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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.

 

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)

 

Columbus Day Snack

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Columbus Day is celebrated the second Monday in October across the United States.

 

Teach the kiddos about why we celebrate Columbus Day with this easy snack!  Take one apple and slice to make the bases of each ship.  Next, slice a stick of celery to make the pole for the sail.  Finally, add a sail by using a cracker (I used Wheat Thins) and add a little sun made of cheese.
To create the waves as well as the names on the ships, use the following method with some yogurt:

 

Variations:
Use cheese for the sails (those square slices of cheese would work great)
Use little sandwich cut-outs for the boats
Make the pole out of a carrot stick
Use your imagination!

(Linking up HERE)

 

A Pair of Pair Snacks

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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!

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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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