Creative Kid Snacks

**Note:  I created another blog completely devoted to Creative Kid Snacks - and they've come a long way from these!  Please hop on over there and check them out!**

Perhaps it's because I've jumped into the blogging world with both feet and I've been filling my mind with so much creativity, cutsie-ness, and mommmy power that I couldn't help but start creating these inventive new snacks for the kids. 

Perhaps Pinterest is also to blame.

Whatever the reason, I thought I'd show you a few of the "creative" snacks I made up this last week.

Cottage cheese, raisins, 1/2 a baby carrot, and celery

Snail: banana cut lengthwise, oatmeal, grapes, and a raisin

Two flowers: cucumbers, carrots over cottage cheese, grapes, graham crackers

Half an apple sliced up for easy eating and to create the illusion of a smile, a slice of colby jack cheese sliced up with the pizza roller, and cheerios with raisins underneath them to look like eyeballs (I guess I added those later and snapped this picture beforehand!)

I just think it's fun to create something unique, partially for the fun of stretching your mind a little bit to come up with a snack that's made out of the foods you want your kids to eat anyway but that has that novelty aspect to it!

Also, involving the kiddos in the process by asking them what they would like to make and finding good foods you could use to make it is fun.  It takes the pressure off you to come up with it and they take so much more ownership over the snack.

We all know that the more ownership the kids take in creating something, the more proud they are of it and, in this case, the more they want to eat it!

My little helper working with me to create her own snack

Turtle: grapes & cheese, Ground: plain oatmeal with honey drizzled over top, Sun: cheese, Cloud: whipped cream, Eye: raisin

For the record, all of these were gobbled right up!

The other creations not shown here were:

(1) a flower with string cheese as the stem, thinly sliced apple circles for the petals and a couple grapes for the center.  (Obviously I could have made the stem with celery or other things, but we get the idea)

(2) a fly.  (I know it sounds weird, but Grace requested it!)  Made the body the same way as the spider, but used a peanut butter sandwich and cut wing shapes out of that.

What fun!  As you can see, the options are endless!

Starting with the healthy foods, just see what you can come up with!

Here are some of my Pinterest inspirations on this topic:

 Can you believe that piano?  It's just nuts what some people can do!

Now, Click HERE to see my follow up post to this - see what Grace's creative lunches inspired her to do!

What are your ideas for creative kid snacks?  What'cha got?

Do share!

Tomorrow is book day!

Amy

Check out my submission of this post to Tatertots and Jello and Living Life Intentionally!  Their buttons are in my tab up top!