Play with Food! [Contributed by The Usual Mayhem]

This post was contributed by Erin of The Usual Mayhem.

Play with Food!

I’m always looking for fun ways to jazz up our meals. My kids are the kind who will eat anything that isn’t nailed down, but adding an element of child creativity and play with food is a great way to encourage even the pickiest eaters to try something unfamiliar.

Here’s a fun way to play with food…

Gather as many kinds of fruit as you have in the house. In this instance, I had a few kinds of melon, bananas, strawberries, and apples. Slice the bigger fruit into slices about an inch thick.

Now break out the cookie cutters and let the kids loose!

If you have shish kebab sticks, they can even make a bouquet, using banana chunks and strawberries as floral centers. Other possibilities could be aliens, silly monsters, faces, or anything else that captures their imagination.

Or how about using alphabet cookie cutters and practicing their spelling words?

Now eat and enjoy!

Erin is the owner and author of The Usual Mayhem blog. She is also a daycare educator, a homeschooler, and the mother of three rambunctious children with very different personalities and challenges. She writes a weekly nature study class for SchoolhouseTeachers.com, and is a contributor at Mummyology, Pre-K and K Sharing, Serenity You, and So You Call Yourself a Homeschooler.

What better way to make healthy foods more fun and inviting for your kids, right?! Thanks for the inspiration to “Play with Food,” Erin!