This got me thinking about creative ways to get Rebekah eating- and maybe even trying some new foods. We've been doing Bento style lunches and snacks lately- all the kids are eating more with less begging on my part. They are also eating a larger variety of healthy items- offering them food cut in fun shapes, as well as giving them more types of food at each sitting in small quantities seems to really help them eat well. I used to give each child a sandwich and a piece of fruit or cheese everyday for lunch. Now they get their sandwich cut in fun shapes (tiny ones for Rebekah and bigger ones for the other two) and 2 to 4 "side dishes". Before if I gave Rebekah a half a banana I had to coax every bite down, now I cut the banana in slices or even fun shapes and give her a fork so she doesn't have to touch it and she'll eat the whole thing and even ask for more!
Here are the lunches the kids had today- nothing special about them except the presentation.
Michael has a PB & J cut into a star, 1/3 a banana cut in slices, and 2 silicone cupcake holders- one with sliced grapes and one with dry Cookie Crunch cereal as snack.
Miriam's PB & J is cut into 2 hearts.
Rebekah's PB sandwich is cut into tiny stars, hearts and flowers. Her cheese is in tiny heart slices and her banana is also cut into little slices. She ate everything on her plate except for 2 of the sandwich bites- that's pretty amazing for Rebekah!
The girls are begging me to post pictures of their doodle bears- so here they are.
3 comments:
That's a great, creative way to get them to eat. Question: What about waste? What about the wasted pieces of bread, cheese, etc. Just curious, I was always too tight to throw away perfectly good food...or is that what you have for lunch these days?...tee hee.
Hehe...well I already cut the crusts off their sandwiches- and I'm really careful to choose cutters that will almost reach the edges to minimize waste. That's also why Rebekah gets several shapes b/c I can fit them together like a puzzle so there is very little waste. I also figure that if I was throwing away 1/2 a sandwich before due to R not wanting to eat, throwing away 1/6 or so from waste after cookie cutters is actually less waste...
Cheese and bologna - luckily Michael doesn't really know about cool shapes so the poor boy usually gets the scraps on his plate (terrible I know!).
Fruit- I eat all the scraps.
Really creative and fun!
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