Smoothies give your child a full serving of fruit.
Making healthy snacks for children is important not only for their many vitamins and nutrients, but also to help prevent childhood obesity. To make healthy snacks more exciting for the children, use your imagination to come up with creative ways to add fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods to your child's diet.
Frozen Snacks
Give your child his full daily fruit servings in a fun and creative way by freezing them. Frozen snacks remind your child of Popsicles and ice cream, and can be joined with a healthy snack alternative. Serve bite-size pieces of frozen fruits like grapes, melon balls or pineapple chunks by making a frozen fruit salad. Another popular option is to freeze bananas and create banana pops. For healthier ice pops, fill ice-cube trays with freshly squeezed fruit juice and wooden craft sticks. Once frozen, they will pop out of the trays and become healthy frozen snacks.
Smoothies
Another way to get your children to eat different types of fruit each day is with smoothies. Kids love to drink smoothies as they are delicious and colorful. Blend frozen or fresh fruit, ice, fruit juice and other ingredients and pour into a tall glass. This is also a way to get your child's dairy into her daily diet by adding milk or yogurt to the smoothies.
Fun Shapes
Turn a healthy snack into a fun event. By using cookie cutters, you will turn an ordinary tuna or turkey sandwich and vegetable slices into a creative and healthy snack. The types of cookie cutters you use will vary depending on your child's preference. Your daughter may enjoy butterfly, heart or crown shapes while your soon may prefer a baseball mitt. During the holidays, choose themed cookie cutters like Easter eggs, Christmas trees, and four-leaf clovers for St. Patrick's Day. Sandwiches are easy to slice into shapes with the cookie cutters; vegetables may be first cut into thin slices before using the cutters.
Crunchy Snacks
Crunchy snacks are fun for children to eat, and easy to pack in school lunches. Let your child get creative with his snack by choosing the ingredients he wants to use. He might make cracker stacks with whole-wheat crackers and hummus or other healthy spread. He might dip pretzels or cut-up vegetables in low-fat ranch dip or hummus. Give him a small container of yogurt with granola or fresh fruit pieces like apples.
Tags: , cookie cutters, healthy snack, child full, cookie cutters will