Food Creations Archives - Page 5 of 11

20+ Earth Day Activities for Kids

April 16, 2013 By Deirdre

Many of us celebrate Earth Day everyday. It is such a wonderful time to look for ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle things that we will be keeping at home or giving to others. Here are some of the Earth Day activities we have done. We craft with recycled materials, pick up trash we have found on the ground in parks, and use Earth friendly products.

There are so many wonderful ways to celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd. I have done several dozen Earth Day activities that feature recycled materials or highlight Earth Day. Some of them can be found right here on JDaniel4’s Mom. Others we have created and shared on other wonderful blogs. If you are looking for an activity to do or a snack to serve your children, I think that you will find a list of them below.

Earth Day Activities

Upcycled Plant Water Bottle

Paper Bag Turkey (Using newspaper, bread tags, and paper bags)

Former Wipe Container Become a Sensory Bin

Blueberries and Grape Earth

Newspaper Bowler Hat

Backyard Science Table

Wrapping Paper Collage

Plastic Jug Jellyfish

Lorax Made of Magazine Pictures

Recycled Treasures Christmas Tree

Milk Jug Skeleton

Water Bottle Fish Mobile

Egg Carton Color Matching Activity

Hanger Balance

Old Rope Letter Walking

Soda Bottle Flower

Plastic Lettuce Box Terrarium

Elephant CD Puppet

I hope you find something you and your children can do together for Earth Day or any day really. If you haven’t found just what you are looking for you may find it on my Earth Day or Crafts from Recycled Materials Pinterest Boards. There 80+ Earth Day activities shared via pins on those boards

Earth Day for Kids – Earth Day Pancake Lunch

April 15, 2013 By Deirdre

Earth Day is coming up in a few weeks and the Earth Day related Tissue Box Challenge starts here tomorrow. I decided that JDaniel needed to have an Earth Day breakfast for lunch in a bento. He just had to have one.

I had a hard time deciding how to make the Earth as main dish. I even asked the members of a bento bloggers Facebook group for their thoughts. They came up with several great ideas in no time. These ladies are experts on making food creations. They suggested that I cut out shapes of the continents out of sheets of fruit chew material, dye noodles blue and green, draw the continents with food markers and more.

I decided to try to make blue and green pancakes. The pancake looked great in the pan until I flipped it over. While it was cooking the pancake had browned and you could no longer see the continents of North and South America I had tried to make. When the pancakes were done, I had to cut off the brown cooked area. With the cooked area removed I was able to display the continents.

After the pancake adventure, I decided to go with two easy side dishes. The first is blue yogurt with slices of grapes placed into it. Normally we have blueberry yogurt, but someone has been inhaling it lately. (The little snacker and not the big snacker this time.) I had to dye plain white yogurt blue for this breakfast for lunch Earth Day Lunch.

The scrambles eggs turned out to be the easiest part of the meal. I literally just made scrambled eggs in the microwave. When they were cooked, I dyed some of the green and some blue.

Earth Day is wonderful celebration of all we have been given on this planet. Whether you decide to create a special themed lunch or serve leftovers to celebrate recycling, I hope you will take a moment to share a meal, and talk about Earth Day.

More Earth Day for Kids Meals

Earth in Fruit

Leftover Signs of Spring

Healthy Snack for Kids : Butterfly Bento

April 8, 2013 By Deirdre

Healthy Snack for Kids - Butterflies in a Bento

We visited the Tennessee Aquarium while we were away for Spring Break. At the top of the new aquarium building was a butterfly garden. JDaniel had a wonderful time chasing them around. He also enjoyed seeking them out under leaves and behind trees. It was amazing to see the wide variety of butter flies they had living there. In honor of our visit with butterflies I made JDaniel a healthy snack for kids butterflies in a Bento.

The butterfly was cut out of a flour tortilla free hand. It might have looked better if it had been cut using a cookie cutter, but we didn’t have one large enough for a sandwich.

The butterfly’s wing design was made using pepperoni and tomatoes layered. JDaniel really isn’t into lunch meat right now. I do still include it in lunches just encase he decides he likes it again. The body of the butterfly is made of a slice of cheese cut into the body of the butterfly. Small pieces of cheese are the butterflies antennas.

There is also a small butterfly created using a clementine orange and a blueberries. If you follow this blog regularly, you know that JDaniel hasn’t been big on carrots. I do keep trying to put them in snacks and lunches. This time the carrot was paired with a slice of cucumber.

This snack Bento isn’t filled to the brim with food and I did that on purpose. A small snack seems to leave JDaniel hungry for lunch or dinner later. If this snack had included a whole clementine with 12 blueberries, carrots with dip and a fully decorated butterfly, JDaniel would have been full at mealtime.

If JDaniel is full at meal time, he tends to want to take tiny bites of food and then flutter around the room. I would rather that he eat his meal and nibble on a snack.

Here some more healthy snack for kids ideas:

Star Wars Food Creations for Kids

Bento Lunch with Cracker Sandwiches

Summer Sunshine Bento Lunch

You will find more wonderful healthy snack for kids ideas on my Food Creations Pinterest board.

Easter Bunny Salad With Leftover Easter Eggs

April 1, 2013 By Deirdre

We love to dye Easter eggs at our house and we showcase them in bowl on the kitchen table for a short time. I love to look at them, but I want to make sure we eat the boiled eggs that are in them. One way I have found to use them is in salads.

I made JDaniel and I both Easter Bunny Salad Bento. They were filled with delicious salads that contained dyed Easter eggs, fresh spinach, bacon, egg shaped American cheese pieces, and bunny shaped toasted croutons.

How We Made Our Easter Egg and Bunny Bento

The lunch also included bunny shaped marshmallows and a bunny trail mix. The marshmallows disappeared first. I bet you knew that they would. The croutons went next although JDaniel announced they didn’t taste as good as the ones that come in a box. (I guess I need to work on that.) The trail mix of three types of raisins, tropical dried fruit and Annies Bunnies cookies went next.

JDaniel picked around the fresh spinach literally. He moved the spinach around to get to the parts of the salad that he really wanted. He ate a little of the egg and all of the bacon along with the cheese. I was shocked that he didn’t inhale the spinach. JDaniel has been known to inhale a bowl of fresh spinach.

Maybe he was full. He did eat all of his dessert first. Next time I need to save the dessert for later. I ate my dessert after my salad, but I guess five year old boys just don’t do that. I confess I felt full after eating the trail mix and the marshmallow for dessert. Maybe I put too much of it in our bentos. Oh! Well, I will have to try it a little bit differently next week.

I am thinking a boring dessert and an exciting main dish. Stop by next week to see what I end up serving JDaniel for lunch.

What do you do with your hard boiled Easter eggs?

20 Easter Activities for Kids

March 25, 2013 By Deirdre

With Easter less than a week away I thought I would share with you some Easter themed activities for kids. They include crafts, foods creations and learning moments that you could do at your house. None of these kids Easter activities is really complicated to make and they were all were fun create. Most of them could and should be created by your kids!

Easter Activities for Kids

Floral centerpiece made with a tissue box.Crowing rooster Easter centerpiece made with an egg carton.Paint chip easter basket looks woven due to the paint chips.White glove rabbit puppet is a great way to used old gloves!Pencil eraser stamping a paper Easter egg.Paper plate easter bunny that is is cute and easy to make.Tin foil Easter egg is so pretty when completed.

Easter lamb food creation lunch

Bounding Bunnies Bento with cheese rabbits.

Sneaking carrots lunches with grilled cheese rabbit sandwich lunch and a lunch with carrot cream cheese.

Practicing number writing in salt and making a carrot dip are both exciting ways to learn.

True Meaning of Easter Rocks activity

12 Ways to Learn with Plastic Easter Eggs that are fun!

Easter Story Cookies with a guide as to how the Easter story fits into each step and ingredient.

Legend of the Dogwood Tree Craft Chalk Bunny Hopping Activity

Three Easter Chick Learning Activities

For more Easter activities for kids please check out my Easter Crafts, Snacks and Activities Pinterest board.

Deirdre is a stay at home mom. Prior to staying home she worked as an elementary school teacher and technology integration specialist for over twenty years. She hold an Early Childhood degree and a Masters in Developmental Reading. She is the blogger behind JDaniel4’s Mom, a site focused on sharing ways to learn and grow beside your children.

Easter Idea- Easter Story Cookies

March 20, 2013 By Deirdre

Mrs. Hatten (my mentor mom at church) shared this wonder Easter idea with me for resurrection cookies. I am thrilled to be able to share it with you. Each step in making these cookie a scripture verse to go with it. This is a fantastic way to share the Easter story with children the evening before Easter.

Easter Story Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup of whole pecans ( You can use chocolate chips instead)

1 tsp. of vinegar

3 egg whites

pinch of salt

1 cup of sugar

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. (Don’t wait and do it until the recipe is done.)

Place the pecans or chocolate chips into a baggie and let children beat them with a wooden spoon to break into small pieces. Explain that after Jesus was arrested He was beaten by Roman soldiers Read John 19:1-3.

Let each child smell the vinegar. Put 1 tsp of vinegar into a mixing bowl. Explain that when Jesus was thirty on the cross. He was given vinegar to drink. Read. John 19: 28-30.

Add egg whites to the vinegar. Eggs represent life. Explain that Jesus gave His life to give life to us. Read John 10:10-11.

Sprinkle a little salt into each child’s hand. Let them taste it and brush the rest into the bowl. Explain that this represents the salty tears shed by Jesus’ followers and the bitterness or our own sin. Read Luke 23:27.

So far the ingredients are not very tasty. Add 1 cup of sugar to the mixture while beating. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us. He wants us to know that and belong to Him. Read. Ps. 34:8 and John 3:16.

Beat the mixture with a mixer until it forms stiff peaks. Explain that the color white stands for purity in God’s eyes. When he looks at us, he sees that our sins have been cleansed by Jesus. Read. Is. 1:18 and John 3:1-3
Fold in nuts or chocolate chips. Then drop by teaspoonfuls onto a cookie tray covered with wax paper. Explain that each mound represents the rocky tomb where Jesus’ body was laid. Read Matt. 27:57-60.
Put the cookie sheet in the oven and turn the oven off. Give each child a piece of tape and seal the oven door. Explain that the tomb was sealed. Read Matt. 27:65-66.

This Easter Idea walks children through the Easter story while creating a treat.

Go to bed! Explain that they may feel sad leaving the cookies in the oven overnight. Jesus’ followers were very sad when tomb was sealed.
On Easter morning, open the oven and give everyone a cookie. Notice that they have a cracked surface. When you take a bite, the cookie is hollow. Explain that on the first Easter Jesus’ followers were amazed to find the tomb open and empty.

We baked our cookies early so I could share them with you. I think we will do it early again next year. Easter morning is very hectic and I really want to have the time to talk about what happened to the cookies with JDaniel without feeling rushed.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

Healthy Lunch Ideas – Bounding Bunnies Bento

March 18, 2013 By Deirdre

I really try to give JDaniel healthy lunches. Sometimes I am more successful than others. Lately he has gotten in a rut as to what he wants to be served or make for his lunch. ( He is big on making his lunch all by himself right now.) American cheese sandwiches are what he has decided he likes. I won’t mind much, but he also wants American cheese on a flour tortilla for breakfast. I needed to do something to shake this up a bit. I needed to come up with some healthy lunch ideas!

Wait! I know what you are thinking. This lunch has cheese sandwiches in it. Yes, it does. It has two colors of American cheese in fact. What you can’t see is that under the bunnies are several pieces of pepperoni. Pepperoni isn’t my favorite source of protein, but it is one that he will eat in his lunch. Having some type of protein in the lunch was one of my healthy lunch ideas.

Cheese crackers are another popular lunch item for him to request. I did include a couple cheese crackers in a carrot shaped Easter egg in this lunch, but not many.

What he got more of were carrots and red grapes. He says he doesn’t like raw carrots, but I put them in anyway. JDaniel ended up eating half of them along with all the grapes. When he got home, he had just the two carrots in his bento box. Later when he asked for a snack I required he eat the two remain carrots. Having carrots on the menu was another of my healthy lunch ideas.
He made face while he at the carrots but, he did eat them. In fact he said they weren’t that bad.I keep telling him that healthy bounding bunnies who eat carrots have wonderful eye sight. My husband isn’t big on carrots and he has worn glasses for years. I am hoping JDaniel will make that connection between the need to eat carrots or decide he would like to see the world the way a bouncing bunny can.

Here are some more fun lunches and snacks filled with healthy lunch ideas:

Apple Chicken Salad Bento

Butterflies in a Bento

Christmas Tree Themed Bento

Disclaimer: If carrots really made him sick, I won’t keep trying to get him to eat them.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity Round Up

March 16, 2013 By Deirdre

Whether you are looking for a St. Patrick’s Day craft, game or learning activity, I think you will find a wide variety to choose from in this post. There are 15 different activities that come from nine different blog posts displayed in the collage. We had a wonderful time creating, learning and experimenting to create this posts. I hope you will too.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity Collection

The counting objects in books activity, hair gel letter practice bag and the paper plate emotions spinner. ( He is the third activity in the third row) All came from a post called St. Patrick’s Day Activities: Part One.

The three sensory activities at the end of the first row all came from a post called St. Patrick’s day: Part Two. We had the best time digging for shamrocks and stone potatoes in the the third activity in that row. Then we made a thatched roof house out of play dough and straws. Finally we transferred sticks using chopsticks.

The first three activities in the second row come from a post called Science for Kids- Experiments with Green. We painted with a magnet and a paperclip, painted with homemade chalk paint and made a borax shamrock.

The fourth activity in the second row is a watercolor rainbow my son painted to go along with a St. Patrick’s Day story I wrote. The post was called. Walking on Watery Way Toward Treasure.

The last activity in the second row is one my son and I did at the grocery store. I called the post Seeing Green at the Grocery Store. We had the best time looking for green foods that match the paint chip we brought with us.

We dyed carnations green and orange to match the colors of the Irish Flag in a post called St. Patrick’s Day- Read.Explore.Learn. You will see the fun vases we used in the first picture in the third row.

The goat puppet was made for a post called {An Irish Tale} King Puck- Read.Explore.Learn. King Puck is a festival in Ireland. During the festival a goat is selected to be the king for the year.

Creating a trap for the leprechaun was a blast. My son loved creating pulley and decorating an old clementine box.

Painting with ice cubes was an adventure that I shared in a post called Coloring for Kids: Ice Cube Rainbow Painting.

If you are looking for a special St. Patrick’s Day snack or lunch, I shared a post called 8 St. Patrick’s Day Snack and Lunches. I hope you will check them out.

What is a Golden Birthday? – Robot Party and Cake

March 12, 2013 By Deirdre

JDaniel celebrate his birthday several days last week. I guess if it is your Golden Birthday it tends to be celebrated many times due to the fact that it comes only once in your lifetime. What is a Golden Birthday? Well, JDaniel celebrates his birthday on the 5th of March and he did turn five on that day. I shared with you last week his Golden Birthday breakfast. Along with sharing the food creations from that breakfast, I wanted to share the cakes I made for his class and his Chuck E. Cheese party.

Robot Birthday Cake

I looked forward to putting together his golden robot birthday cake all week. I found a robot cake on the Betty Crocker website and tried to create one like it. It was so easy to put together, but took me a little longer than I thought it would.The cake is a simple yellow cake. The icing is caramel and was created stir in flavor packet and canned frosting. Before frosting the cake I cut 2/3 off the top and used it for the body. I also cut a narrow sliver off the body to use for his feet. Everything but his cupcake hands came from a cake made in a 9×12 pan. His hands are made from two cupcakes. Oh! and his ears or head bolts are made of a cupcake cut in half.

Once the cake was frosted, licorice to connect this hands and feet to his body. Extra licorice Skiddles, Life Savers in gummy form, and golden Oreo like cookies to create his buttons and facial features. I had a blast creating them.

Robot Cupcakes

JDaniel took these cupcakes to school on Wednesday for snack. He doesn’t go to school on Tuesday so, we had to wait a day to celebrate his birthday with his class. I asked, “What is a golden birthday?” They hadn’t heard of it before and they thought is was cool.I used the same cake mix and frosting combination to make his his cupcakes that I later used to make his cake. The robots also had the same licorice mouths. These mouths were a lot more serious than the one on the cake. A food maker was used to draw eyeballs on the Skittles. Marshmallow were cut in half to make the robot’s head bolts or ears.

Golden Breakfast

You may remember that JDaniel’s Golden Birthday Breakfast was filled with a variety of golden foods. He had golden apple parfaits made up of apple pie filling, yogurt, and Golden Grahams cereal layered in a cup. He also had doughnut holes served the shape of a five and apple juice. Golden Birthday Robot Treat Bags

Last week I shared a post called 23 Moms Share Treat Bags Ideas with you. I loved so many of their ideas that I tried to incorporate them into JDaniel’s treat bag.

I didn’t buy special bags for his treats instead I used plain zip lock bags. They were so easy to seal and parents didn’t have to deal with ribbons and party bag. They weren’t pretty, but they were functional.

Into the bags I placed a thank you card for coming to the party, a robot sticker book, robot stickers, fruit chews, and two fruit strips. I didn’t what to include candy or plastic trinkets The moms in the treat bag post had said they didn’t like to see them in the bag.

The parents seemed pleased with this and so were the kids.

I think this is my favorite party theme so far!Did celebrate your golden birthday?

8 St.Patrick’s Day Snacks and Lunches

March 11, 2013 By Deirdre

I thought I would share with you several of the St. Patrick’s Day snacks and lunches I have created. Half of them are from posts I wrote for this blog and the other half are from posts I wrote for other blogs. I hope you will take a moment and explore the posts that they were originally shared on.

Here are the St. Patrick’s Day Snack’s and Lunches

>The leprechaun face in vegetables is from a post I wrote for the Iowa Farmer’s Wife called Getting Children to Eat New Foods: St. Patrick Loves Veggies.

The colored pepper rainbow over homemade spinach hummus is from post I wrote for Kid’s Activities Blog called Crafting a Healthy St. Patrick’s Day Snack.

JDaniel recently had a special St. Patrick’s Day lunch with a spinach pizza served in a bento box. He loved it! I think you will too.

St. Patrick’s Day Cinnamon Rolls is a post I wrote for Kid’s Activities blog. It will featured tomorrow on their blog. They are simple to make and yummy to eat.

JDaniel loved this fruit and yogurt parfait. It was super easy to make and he said it was delicious.

Last year I shared how to make Simple Irish Soda Bread on No Time for Flashcards.

We had a St. Patrick’s muffin tin a couple of years ago that featured a leprechaun turkey burger. The post was called St. Patrick Needs Fruit.

JDaniel had an Irish Symbols Snack for Muffin Tin Monday. It featured the symbols from the Claddagh ring. They stand for love, loyalty and friendship.

You will find more St. Patrick’s Day lunches and snacks on my Food Creations board on Pinterest. Please take a moment to check them out.

What will you have having for lunch or a snack on St. Patrick’s Day?