It is important to provide kids with a healthy diet and to follow the nutrition guidelines for children. That said, it isn’t always easy to get kids interested in eating healthy foods. Finding some healthy kid-friendly recipes is a good place to start, but you might want to consider adding a little fun to mealtime.
When you make an effort to do so when putting together easy meals for your kids, you won’t have as many problems getting your kids to the table or getting them to eat healthier foods. If you have a picky eater or simply want to make mealtime more interactive, here are some tips:
Teaching With Food
What could be better than adding some fun to the eating experience while also making it a learning opportunity? As a simple option, you could just cut up fruits and veggies and have them count out how many of each they want. Beyond that, you could use some creative ideas to turn the meal into a learning game.
One option is to turn a pizza into a puzzle your child can put back together. Whether you use store-bought dough or you make your own, a homemade pizza can be turned into a fun puzzle. Once the pizza is done cooking, use your pizza wheel to cut it into different shapes. Mix them up and invite your child to put them back together before they dig in.
You could also use a flour tortilla as the face of a clock to teach your child how to tell time. Using the tortilla as the face, make hands out of carrot sticks or cheese sticks, and then use sliced vegetables to represent the numbers.
Make it Squeezable
Kids have a tendency to like squeezing things like condiments onto their plates. As a parent, you can take advantage of this tendency by putting any pourable food into a squeeze bottle.
If you are serving salad, put the dressings in a squeeze bottle. Salad is a healthy meal, and this is a way to make it more enjoyable for kids. You could buy a range of healthy dressings at the store, or you could take the time to make your own healthy salad dressing.
You could also use the squeeze containers to write messages or draw pictures for your kids. This will make the plate a little more interesting and fun for the kids.
Cut Shapes
With some cookie cutters and a knife, you can cut a wide range of shapes into foods like sandwiches and lunch meats.
With the cookie cutters, you obviously have an assortment of options. You could make stars, hearts, animals, and more. It all just depends on the different types of cookie cutters you have.
If you want to get even more creative, you could use the cookie cutter shapes and a knife to build an entire scene using shaped foods. If you have the right cookie cutters, you could cut a sandwich up into a scene of the night sky. Even if you don’t have a moon-shaped cookie cutter, cutting a crescent moon with a knife is easy to do freehand.
Food Animals
By taking the time to make animals out of food, you can make any meal more fun. In some cases, you could even prepare the food and let the kids make their own animals.
One option is to take cocktail weenies and turn them into little dogs. Just grab some pretzel sticks to use as legs, and you have your tiny, edible dogs.
You could also use toast with jam, sliced bananas and some fresh blueberries to make animal faces out of the toast. When it comes to making animals with food, you have an endless number of options. You just need a little bit of creativity and some time to put it all together.
Even if you have a picky eater, getting them more involved when it comes to eating is a great way to encourage adventurous eating. Sitting down with your child during meals is the perfect opportunity for parents to nurture healthy eating habits and even teach their children basic skills.
