One of the easiest ways to make meal times special for kids is with fun and creative ideas. With many kids currently at home for the school holidays, parents have gone from a bowl of cereal and rushing out the door to having to make three meals a day. There is only so much rice and pasta you can eat before kids get bored and you feel like you are making the same thing day after day, so how about letting them create and make their own breakfast and lunch ideas!
This can be a fun way for your kids to get creative and use their imaginations, they could even do a cost exercise to find out how much it would be to purchase everything they need. They can also plan and organise their lunches for the whole week and you could turn this into a lesson combing creative arts, maths and possible a fun reward after completely a school project.
Get Creative!
Apart from a creative mind and an attitude open to mess, a good start is with a box of cookie cutters to see what various shapes they can use to be creative with. “Eggs in a nest” are a super quick and easy meal that kids will enjoy helping you make. Depending on their age, children can cut out toast centers with various cutters and then crack eggs into the middle, or flip the toasts to fry both sides, they can be filled with anything from scrambled egg to peanut butter. The magical fairy bread never ceases to impress during these long home school days!
There are endless ways that kids can get creative with their breakfasts and lunches, cutting pancakes and bread for sandwiches into shapes to make animal faces or arranging fruits into fun and artistic designs. Kids can make their own yoghurt bowls at home, you can just set out yoghurt, fruit, granola or pieces of their favourite cereal or any other topping that you have and let them build their own bowls. Hard boiled eggs are always a winner with toast shapes or bacon/veggie strips, this will not only delight them but could keep them occupied for a while! You could make the whole breakfast and lunch experience into a creative competition with a weekly award given at the end of the week for the funniest or most artistic lunch.
Being Healthy Can Be Fun Too!
And…what’s not to love about a healthy, filling smoothie with only four ingredients? Kids can help to cut up or select their favourite fresh or frozen fruits which can be blended up yoghurt to make them taste like milkshakes. You could drive discussions on nutrition and how individual fruits contain different types of vitamins or the minerals in the yoghurt, such as calcium and magnesium. The importance of including the superfood groups into your diet, you could even allow older kids to research the super foods and ask them to recount their learning at dinner. This could springboard into a discussion on what each of the vitamins do and which parts of the body benefit the most and why. At this time in particular it’s a good idea to discuss their immunity, what this means and how to ensure to keep their bodies fit and healthy so that they can fights off colds or viruses. heck out ‘The Kids Menu’ on Netflix which is an updated kid friendly documentary about how healthy eating, especially in childhood, is very important.
Themed Lunch Boxes
Another idea that is really popular with kids is to let them create around their favourite movies, maybe a FROZEN themed lunch box or a unicorn sandwich. They could even make and print their own lunch box notes or draw small pictures to accompany each meal. This can also be a good start for fussy eaters to take a little control over what they like to eat and try new things, for some reason carrots always taste better when kids think they are snowmen’s noses!
On our last word, let’s not forget the chocolate as after all it’s only chocolate that will get us through this! Brownies, muffins, s’mores and stacked squares can be kept for a weekend treat and don’t knock the boxed brownie mixes with a variety of toppings as they could well become your best friend in the ensuing weeks!
