Lesson 3: Meal Planning
Let the Kids Play with their Food
While candy and chips are fun to kids, fruits and vegetables can be boring. But have you ever noticed that, in stores and commercials, even candy and chips have gimmicks? It’s up to you to make fruits and veggies fun too. One way to get kids interested in fruits and vegetables is to take them with you to the store and allow them to suggest and pick out new ones that they want to try. They will also get excited if they can be creative. Help them find and try out new recipes from Munchie Madness. These recipes are simple enough for even younger kids, with your supervision.
Another way is to let them play with their food. Now I know this goes against good table manners but kids will get excited about their food if they can use their imagination. Kids will love experimenting with fruits and vegetables as art, and you can use this as an after-school activity/snack. Here are some suggestions to start with.
Candle Salad
Place a pineapple slice on a saucer. Cut a banana in half and stand one piece up inside the pineapple, to appear as a candle. Using a toothpick, attach a cherry on top to appear as a flame.
Veggie Art
Cut broccoli and cauliflower florets to appear as trees and shrubs, slice a cantaloupe to appear as canoes, cut chunks of other fruits and veggies to be made into ‘people’ and ‘animals’. Bananas make great ‘bodies’ and grapes make good heads. Cherry tomatoes make great beach balls. A slice of squash can be a summer sun. Peanuts can be rocks. Pieces of dry cereals might even find a place in the 'scene'. A mound of mashed potatoes makes a ‘snowy mountain with ‘celery sleds’.
For breakfast, provide banana slices, peach slices, strawberries, and blueberries and encourage the kids to create faces or scenes on whole grain toaster waffles spread with peanut butter.
Simply supply the fruits and veggies and let the kids create their own art. You can even have them tell a story to go with their picture. If you come up against the problem that they don’t want to eat what they’ve created, remind them that food wilts and shrivels with time and that part of the fun is eating their ‘art’ because they can then do it all over again another time.
You get the idea. Be creative. Use your imagination.
