St. Patrick's Day Archives - Page 2 of 2

Getting Picky Eaters to Try New Foods: St Patrick Loves Veggies

February 28, 2014 By Deirdre

This post originally appeared as a guest post on The Iowa Farmer’s Wife. Some children love to eat whatever you put in front of them. Some children find one or two things they love to eat and make them their go to foods. Some children used to eat everything and then decided to stop eating foods they had previously loved for months. There are still more who have children who it is hard to predict what they will eat that are really picky eaters. Those of us who have happy eaters really are the lucky ones. The number of families with children that eat what they have before them seems to be rare. My sisters both have picky eaters.

One way to try to get them to eat veggies is to present them in a new way or form or variety. Below I have constructed St. Patrick’s head using a variety of vegetables. Some of them I knew would go over big with my son and some that were new to him.

My son loves sweet potato French fries. He could eat them all day long. I decided to try a variety that was a little spicy and a different shape from the kind I have purchased before. The shape change didn’t throw him. Thankfully he doesn’t really care what shape his food comes in. I know there are many of you that have kids that strongly prefer foods be the same shape and texture every time. My son did care about the flavor, he really didn’t like the spicy flavor. I gave him some ranch dip to go with the fries and they became edible and actually enjoyable to eat.

Saint Patrick’s hat is made of Italian green beans. This variety of bean is thicker and a little harder to chew than the super thin French cut green beans or traditional green beans. Again it is a change in texture and visual appearance from the green beans I usually serve. I got lucky that he really liked this style of beans. My son actually asked to have them for a snack later in the week.

The hat also has large peas in its band. Peas can be tricky with my husband and my son. They both prefer petite sweet peas. These were tolerated but, not loved at my house. Tolerated is still good. It means he was still eating the peas.
The final food in the hat is spinach. My son loves spinach. He requested that I put it in the meal. I am so lucky that he thinks it is delicious. Spinach has so many wonderful nutrients in it.
This veggie creation went over well at my house. I hope that if you have children that are limited in the veggie consumption serving them vegetables in a new and different way will cause them to change this.

If you are looking for more food creations to serve your children, you may want to check out my Food Creations board on Pinterest.
If you are looking for other St. Patrick’s Day food creations, crafts or learning activities, you may want to check out my St. Patrick’s Day board on Pinterest.

{St Patrick’s Day} Yogurt and Cereal Parfait

February 26, 2013 By Deirdre

Every morning JDaniel asks for a piece of cheese on a tortilla (I have tried serving them to him with fancy food additions), fruit and yogurt for breakfast. I thought I could convince him to try something new by creating a St Patrick’s Day cereal and yogurt parfait for him. It isn’t St Patrick’s Day yet, but I didn’t think St. Patrick would mind my creating a treat for JDaniel a little early.Before I could even create the parfait one of the key ingredients disappeared. The key lime yogurt had apparently called out to my husband late one night from the deep recesses of the refrigerator from behind the french onion dip and cottage cheese. If my son had known it was there, he probably would have tried to have it early. (It is is very favorite flavor!)

JDaniel ended up getting have his parfait on a different day than I had planned, but he didn’t seem to mind. He ate every bit of it.

How did I put this St Patrick’s Day snack together?

Ingredients1 small container of orange yogurt (I used orange dreamsicle.)

1 small container of key lime pie yogurt

1/2 cup of Lucky Charms cereal

Directions:

Spoon the orange flavored yogurt into the bottom of a plastic cup.
Place the marshmallow shapes and cereal in a pattern so it can be seen outside the cup.
Sprinkle cereal on top of the yogurt.
Spoon the key lime yogurt on top of the cereal.
Sprinkle Lucky Charms on the top of the lime yogurt or arrange it in a pattern.

I served this to him unfrozen, but I think these would be great a frozen yogurt treat. (We will have to try that next year.) I hope you try this St Patrick’s Day yogurt and cereal parfait.

Here are some other St Patrick’s Day food related posts I have written:

St. Patrick’s Day Food- Irish Soda Bread

Getting Children to Eat New Foods- St. Patrick Loves Veggies

Crafting a Healthy St. Patrick’s Day SnackIrish Symbols in a Snack for Muffin Tin Monday

If you do try any of the above recipes for St Patrick Day, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

St.Patrick’s Day Craft for Kids- Simple Rainbow

March 17, 2012 By Deirdre

I was in charge of the St. Patrick’s Day party in JDaniel4’s preschool class on Thursday. I looked and looked for a craft or game to play with the children and couldn’t decide on what to do.

It was during a trip to my local grocery store while looking at school supplies that the idea for this craft came together.

Everything in the craft was gathered from the school supply area or the pharmacy section.

Supplies:

Colored Dots

Cotton Balls

Unlined Index Cards

Directions:

1. Draw three arches on each index card prior to passing them out to the children.

2. Give the children two sheets of dots to place on the arches.

3. Pass out cotton balls for the children to glue to the end of the rainbow.

Read.Explore.Learn.- Leprechauns Never Lie

March 16, 2012 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read.Explore.Learn.! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie into children’s books.

I look forward to seeing the ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

- Link your activity below.

- Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

- Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

- If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

St. Patrick's Day Activities: Leprechauns Never Lie Learning Fun

The leprechaun in Leprechauns Never Lie by Lorna Balian is a very tricky guy. Ninny Nanny and her Gram are in dire straits prior to catching the leprechaun. Once he has been accidentally captured when Ninny Nanny falls over a log and onto him, the leprechaun appears to forget where he has hidden his gold.

The leprechaun first tells them that he thinks it is in the straw that was to have been put on the roof of the thatched house to repair the holes that exist there. Ninny Nanny tries spreading it on the ground and finds moving it to the roof is the best solution.

Then he says it is in a pile of branches under a tree that should have been taken in as firewood. Gran sorts through branches to look for coins and Ninny Nanny carries them into the fireplace.

Next, he says it is in the river. Ninny Nanny has to drag buckets of the water to a water barrel outside their house that is empty when dropping it on the ground fails to keep the water from flowing back into the river.

Finally, he remembers it was moved to the potato patch that is filled with potatoes that Ninny Nanny had been too lazy to dig up. After digging up all but one plant, Ninny Nanny is furious that the treasure can’t be found.

She is so upset that she releases the leprechaun in a fit of anger. He runs as fast as he can away.

That night Ninny Nanny and Gran have potato soup by a warm fire made of wood Ninny Nanny brought in. Later in the night, the leprechaun returns after they have gone to sleep to retrieve his gold from under the last plant.

I love that Ninny Nanny and Gran along with the leprechaun both end up with treasure. This is such a fun book to read. The brown and white pictures are filled with humor and whimsy.

What did we do?

We upcycled the wipes container and made it a treasure chest. Inside the treasure chest was pinto beans and shamrocks. JDaniel had to dig for the shamrocks using a little rake. After a few minutes of raking, he decided to use measuring spoons instead.

Once he had found all of the shamrocks, he decided to just transfer the beans back and forth between the treasure check and the container I use to hold the pinto beans.

Wipe Container Becomes a Storage Container

When we finished playing with the beans and shamrocks, we put plastic bags into the wipe container. We put the container in my car so, we will have plastic bags and a hand to store treasures ( acorns and small rocks we find during outings, dirty clothes, and more.

Shamrock Cookies

JDaniel loves to eat cookies and make them. We made shamrock cookies to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and to share with friends.

What did you do this week?

Last year I reviewed Leprechauns Never Lie and shared a shamrock hunting activity on The Book Chook.

Irish Symbols in a Snack for Muffin Tin Monday

March 12, 2012 By Deirdre

This week you will find many posts on Irish symbols. There will be shamrocks, rainbows, leprechauns, and pots of gold incorporated into meals and crafts galore. My favorite Irish symbols are created in the bread sections above. It is the Claddagh.

When I was a teenager, my mom gave me a Claddagh ring and I cherished it. The meaning behind each of the sections is powerful. The hands symbolize friendship, the crown symbolizes loyalty, and the heart symbolizes love.

I chose to use two different sides of the bread in this snack for a special reason. I wanted to use the difference in color as a talking point with JDaniel. Friendship is something that isn’t limited to race or culture. The simple slices of bread gave me a jumping-off point to talk about that. We don’t have a lot of diversity in our preschool and church, but I would love for JDaniel to have friends from lots of different places and cultures in the world.

The snack also features four different shamrocks. There is a green spinach one with a cheese shamrock across from it. One of the muffin cups has peach yogurt with green Smarties and the other has vanilla yogurt with mandarin oranges. The last two are more abstract shamrocks minus their shamrock stems.

The colors of the Irish flag are also featured in this snack. The flag’s colors are Orange, Green, and White. There is a lot of green and orange in this lunch. The vanilla yogurt is the only white in it.

Two More Irish Symbol Snacks

I have been so blessed to get to shared two other Irish symbol snacks via guest posts on wonderful blogs that shared great ideas of things to do with your children.

Yesterday I shared How to Craft a St. Patrick’s Day Snack on Quirky Momma’s Kids Activity Blog. This snack featured spinach hummus under a rainbow of colored peppers with cauliflower clouds.

Last Wednesday I got to share a post called Getting Children to Eat New Foods: St. Patrick Loves Veggies on The Iowa Farmer’s Wife.

I am so thankful that each of these blogs gave me an opportunity to share on them. If you haven’t had a chance to check out these guest posts, please take a moment and visit them today.

Oh! The Circle on Mom’s- Creative Moms contest ends on the 15th. I am currently in 36th place. I would love to make it into the top 25. If you have a moment and would like to vote for me. It would be wonderful. You can vote daily.

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday.