Preschooler Feeding & Eating: Make Mealtime Fun
Author: By the editors of Parents magazine
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Give a Squeeze:
Fill squeeze bottles with anything pourable -- BBQ sauce, fruit sauce, ketchup, or salad dressing -- then draw pictures and write notes to the kids.
- Express Yourself With dipping sauce, squirt "I Love You" on the plate, next to chicken nuggets and vegetables.
- Shake Up the Salad Serve dressing in a squeeze bottle, and let the kids have fun squirting it onto a healthy mix of lettuce and vegetable slices.
- Be a Star Form the points of a star on a plate with asparagus tips, and fill the center with assorted veggies. Draw an outline around the star with ranch dressing.
Create a Critter:
Children love animals of all kinds -- they'll be charmed by these adorable creatures.
- Turkey Turtles Fold a round slice of turkey in half. Pipe green ketchup over the slice in a block pattern. Add a cherry-tomato head and asparagus-tip legs to complete the turtle transformation.
- Cat and Mouse Make a cat's-face sandwich with round bread, ham slices, and white cheese; add black-olive eyes and a red-pepper nose with chive whiskers. Transform a hard-boiled egg into a whimsical mouse by adding radish ears, olive eyes, a carrot nose, and a celery tail.
Be a Cut Up:
Cookie cutters are great for shaping sandwiches, cheese slices, and lunch meats.
- Celestial Sandwich With a sharp knife or a cookie cutter, make a crescent moon and several stars to turn a lunchtime sandwich such as PB&J into fun-shaped bites.
- The Farmer in the Deli Use farm-animal cookie cutters to cut out animal-shaped open-faced sandwiches, which look great with lettuce for grass and a French-dressing sun.
Teach a Lesson:
Learning can be fun when the lesson tastes good.
- Time to Eat Use a round 8" flour tortilla to create a clock face with cheese-stick hands; cut veggie slices for numbers, and place trimmed cherry tomatoes at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock.
- Feeling Faces Using slices of veggies, show four feelings that toddlers recognize: happy, angry, sad, and surprised.
- Tic-Tac-Toe Create a tic-tac-toe board with green squeeze ketchup, carrot sticks for X's, and cherry tomatoes for O's.
- Pizza Puzzle Heat up a Boboli pizza with tomato sauce, mushrooms, and mozzarella. Using a pizza wheel, make random-shaped slices, and slightly scramble the pieces to create a puzzle that your child can put back together.
Make a Scene:
- Meat-Loaf Forest Carve meat loaf into the shape of a house, and decorate with ketchup; place amid a forest of broccoli trees popping out of mashed potatoes.
More Fun Ideas:
- Under the Sea Create a seascape with baked fish sticks; make waves with ketchup or mayo, and add lettuce for seaweed.
- Sail-Away Sandwich Cut a grilled-cheese sandwich diagonally, and stand triangles on end to look like sails. Form apple slices at base into a boat shape, and attach to a carrot-stick dock.
- Go Mini Kids will eat up miniature versions of foods that perfectly fit their little hands.
- Bite-Size Burgers Using small rolls, serve mini Western cheeseburger patties with star-shaped cheese slices for sheriffs' badges.
- Pint-Size Pups Turn cocktail franks into delicious minidoggies with a thin-pretzel-stick tail and legs.
- Itsy-Bitsy Ham-and-Cheese Sandwich Serve up a ham-and-cheese sandwich using soft party rye or whole-wheat slices of bread cut into minitriangles.
Copyright© 2004. Reprinted with permission from the June 2001 issue of Parents magazine.