Creative Kid Snacks

make fun of lunch!

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.

 

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!

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!

More Play Date Snacks

Snail

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I love the idea of using bright, colorful fruit to recreate some of the beautiful scenes we see in nature.  Although snail shells are not known to be this bright, the two colors I used contrast themselves to show the beautiful pattern that these shells naturally have.
Slice a banana in half lengthwise to make the snail’s body.  Place a ground of oatmeal beneath him.
Add a raisin eye and a sliced blueberry for a mouth.  Use a tiny bit of the other half of the banana for some antennae.
For the shell, use contrasting fruits like raspberries and grapes to form a swirly shell look as shown above.
This one is great to make after reading a book like this:
About this link
(linked HERE)

Solar System

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A great excuse to give our kids a variety of fruits, veggies, meats, and cheeses in one snack (while educating them at the same time), is to make the Solar System with them!  Teach your children about the planets in our Solar System (yes, I know Pluto is no longer considered a planet…read on), and give them a healthy snack at the same time!
Using snacks is an amazing way to teach your young child about science.  Take a look at our Volcano post for a good example of this!

I found foods to use for each planet first, then I handed each to my daughter one at a time and had her repeat the names of the planets with me in order.  As she repeated each one, she laid it on the plate (and I spaced them out a little more for the picture).  She normally doesn’t like pepperoni but she ate it with this snack!
Below is a list of which foods I used for each planet:
Sun: mandarin orange, top sliced off and peeled but not separated
Mercury: a red grape
Venus: celery
Earth: kiwi
Mars: strawberry
Jupiter: pepperoni
Saturn: cheddar cheese
Uranus: a slice of string cheese
Neptune: ham
Pluto: (No longer technically a planet) corn
I added Pluto as a way to show my daughter that it was once a part of the solar system but is no longer.
And this one is another solar system I made last week showing the lines of orbit that each planet has.
I prefer the first version, which do you prefer?
The solar system above was made to show how each planet orbits the sun in our galaxy, the milky way.
I made the lines in the photo below as well as the stars in the photos above using this technique:
Variations:
Make your planets out of anything you have in the house that you can cut into circular shapes.  Use your own creativity for this one!

If you enjoyed this post, check out our other educational snacks

 

Volcano
Egyptian Pyramids
Alphabet Lunch (practice your ABC’s)
Stoplight (to learn about traffic rules)
The Flood
Jonah in the Big Fish
David and Goliath
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?  (Includes a lunch and learning activity)
Joshua and the Battle of Jericho
Snowflake Pancakes (plus 25 great educational activities for the snow)

 

 

 

Flower Pot Snack

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When my daughter and I first started making food art, one of the first creative snacks we thought of was this basket of flowers.
The best thing about making a flower arrangement is that it is totally customizable.  You can make flower out of just about any nutritious food.  Fruits and vegetables are especially perfect because of their bright, beautiful colors.

First, I’ll share how we made this one, then I’ll give you some suggestions for alternative flowers.
Place a graham cracker at the bottom of your plate for a basket.  
Next, thinly slice 1-2  celery sticks flower stems.  If you feel so inclined, you can add “leaves” made out of sugar snap peas, avocado, more celery, green apples, or green grapes.
  Now, create four flowers.  Here’s what we used for ours.
Flower 1:  carrots and a grape.  Flower 2: bananas and the bottom of a strawberry.  Flower 3:  a piece of toast with jam cut into the shape of a tulip.  Flower 4: rosette made of ham.  

I like this snack because of the variety of food groups represented, as well as the way it showcases the beautiful colors of the fruits and veggies.

Other great foods to use for flowers:

strawberries

peaches

nectarines

avocado

watermelon

apples

avocado

bell pepper

hummus: pipe onto plate with a beautiful tip using your cake decorating supplies!

Use your imagination!  I’m sure you will come up with a fantastic plate!  Make one today!

If you enjoyed this snack, you might like our other flower snacks, as well as our nature inspired snacks and everyday scenes.

(Sharing HERE)

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

 

Disney’s "Up" Lunch

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One of our favorite Disney movies is their film”Up”.  It is a such a good movie to watch with the kids. We love making cute snacks to go along with our favorite Disney movies like we did for with Mike Wazowski from Monster’s Inc, Mickey Mouse,
up!
was so creative, and what I love about having lots of fruits and vegetables in the house is the ability to take all those colors and use them to create something like this.  The balloons are made of bananas, green grapes, strawberries, blueberries, carrots, and red grapes.  Shape each fruit or veggie like a circle.  Next, make your house.  I used half of a graham cracker and a triangle Triscuit cracker for the roof.  Windows are made of thin wheels of string cheese.  I took that same string cheese and peeled it into thin pieces to use as the strings for the balloons.  Finish off the house with a banana wheel cut into a rectangle shape, and you have a fabulous and colorful “Up” lunch.
(linked HERE)
all crafts Homemade Projects ~ Add Yours! {8 14}

 

I Love You

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This Valentines Day inspired snack is plain yogurt served in a heart shaped cookie cutter with grapes, blueberries, and strawberries along with some drizzled honey over top.  The “I” is made of celery and the “u” is made of sliced up string cheese.
A sweet lunch like this is one way I show my little girl how much I love her!  
Try using one of your favorite cookie cutters to jazz up your child’s yogurt and fruit snack anytime!

Jonah in the Big Fish

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Create the story of Jonah in the belly of the big fish!  Big Fish: cantaloupe sliced through without cutting in half;  Jonah: Baby carrot with raisin eyes;  Spout: cheerios;  Eyes and Mouth of Fish: red grapes.
Read the story of Jonah and the Big Fish (the book of Jonah in the Old Testament) or in this great Bible for kids. 

(linked HERE) 

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar

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We all love the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  
Take a morning and read the story with your child, then talk about all the foods the caterpillar ate, and perhaps talk about which of the foods he ate were nutritious and which were not. 
Then, create him yourself!  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! 

(linked HERE) 

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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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