Snowflake Tortillas

Big Brother and I made snowflake tortillas today.  He's too young to use scissors, so I cut the tortillas with kitchen scissors so that they looked like snowflakes.  Big Brother loved "painting" melted butter on the snowflakes with our pastry brush.  He helped me fill a shaker with cinnamon and sugar and then sprinkled the mixture on top of the snowflakes.  The recipe says to bake them for 5 minutes, but I baked them for 10 minutes to make sure they were really crispy as Big Brother loves crunchy foods.  He was somewhat concerned that the snowflake was "hot" (warm), but tried a mouse bite.  We'll make them again this week and see if he is more willing to try them since we've already made them once.  Click here for the recipe.

Meal Planning & Grocery Shopping as an Educational Tool

I saw this article about getting your kids involved with meal planning and grocery shopping and thought I'd share.
Click here to read the article.

Fruit Smoothie Pops

This is a great way to get kids to eat fruit!  The smoothie pops are so sweet and yummy, kids don’t realize that they’re healthy!  You can use any kind of fruit and juice that you like.  Here's what we do...

Put a splash of juice (apple, orange, pineapple), several large spoonfuls of plain yogurt, and unfrozen fruit (ripe banana, pineapple, etc) into the blender.  Add frozen fruit of your choice (strawberries, peaches, raspberries, blueberries, etc) to the blender.  Blend until smooth.  Pour into popsicle molds*, freeze, and enjoy!

*Big Brother loves Elmo.  I found small disposable Sesame Street cups, poured the excess smoothie mixture in the cups, put the cups in a Ziploc bag, and froze them.  He loves to use a spoon and eat right out of the cup. - It's similar to eating ice cream.

Let's Eat: Funny Food Songs

Big Brother and Baby Sister love to watch this Sesame Street video.  Grover is a waiter at a restaurant called, Planet Storybook, where he tries to encourage a particularly picky patron to eat healthy food.  Cookie Monster, Telly, and other fun characters sing silly songs about trying new foods, like "Cereal Girl" (a spoof of "Material Girl").  Parents and kids will both enjoy this video.

All Aboard the Shape Train!

I was reading a book of activities for preschoolers and got the inspiration for making a shape train with food.  Big Brother loves trains, so I knew he'd be interested in this project.  You could build just about anything with the shapes (tractors, buildings, cars, flowers, trees, etc). 

I assembled and/or cut various foods up into shapes.  We used a couple of foods he likes to eat (Townhouse crackers and uncooked spaghetti) and some foods he won't try (swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, zucchini, and carrots).  I pointed to and named each of the foods and started to construct the engine.  To my surprise, he jumped in right away (after taking a big bite out of a cracker!) and was quite eager to continue building the train (he usually completely avoids foods on his plate if he's not comfortable with them).

Big Brother constructing his train.

Our finished train.

We didn't use all of the following foods for today's activity, but here are some additional ideas to get you started. 

• Triangles - cheese, bread, crackers, chips, pineapples
• Squares & Rectangles - crackers, graham crackers, celery sticks, bell peppers
• Circles - Cheerios, Oreos, zucchini, chips, bananas, cooked pasta wheels, Melba toast crackers, carrots, apples
• Train car connectors - licorice strips, spaghetti noodles, shredded cheese
• Smoke - marshmallows, blueberries
• Coal - crushed Oreos

What are some other foods that could be used for this activity?  If you do this activity with your child, please share your experience!

Felt Food

I love this idea of making felt food for children to play with.  While Big Brother won't eat pizza (there are too many foods mixed together) or a sandwich, he loves to play with pretend food.  This would be a great way to educate him about the different foods used to make a pizza or sandwiches.  Once he's comfortable with the pretend food, hopefully he'll feel comfortable helping me make the real thing!

Felt Pizza - click here for the tutorial.
Felt Sandwich - click here for the tutorial.