Making Food Fun For Kids

I have been blessed with a child who will eat anything (I know, I shouldn't brag) but during meal time he can get bored and want to play, so I like spruce things up a bit for him and keep him engaged in the meal.  The ideas featured below take no more time than preparing other meals - it's just all about presentation!  For me and my kids, every opportunity is a learning opportunity.  (Except when they've both had cranky days and I need a large small vodka.)  So I try to make mealtime fun and engaging, and here's how:

Fun Food #1 - Sandwich Castle with People/Villagers

This is one of mine and my sons favourite lunches.  It looks inviting, tasty and fun! We have novelty plates like Hungry Caterpillar (or Calapitta as my son says) Spiderman, Lightning McQueen etc so that instantly makes it fun for him. You can use any filling you want in your sandwich and use anything for the people. My sons favourite is a cream cheese sandwich with cucumber and grape people - but I think the combo above is a lot more fun.

Fun Food #2 - Bread/Cookie Cutter Shapes

                 (these were borrowed from google images - mine have gone missing...)

Just simply using fancy pants cutters make lunch time fun for little people. They can play, use their awesome imaginations all whilst getting some yummy tucker!

Fun Food #3 - Colour Fun

http://www.healthymoncton.com/tag/colourful-diet/

What I like about colourful food is that it instantly looks inviting and fun.  What kid doesn't love colour?!  There  are also many options to do with colour.  One I try to do regularly is to make one dish all the same colour.  For instance, I make french toast, with some cheese on the side of the plate, as well as banana and a little pile of corn.  Doing this encourages discussions of other things that are yellow.  Green is also an easy one - lettuce, spinach (my son loves "leaves"), cucumber, beans, grapes etc. Blue and purple is a little hard, but you could always use food colouring for pasta perhaps, or keep those colours geared toward bakes treats.  Rainbow meals are a lot of fun and fruit salad is so easy to make.

I hope my ideas were thought inspiring and please, if you have any other fun food ideas for little kiddies, please let me know below!!

Ash x