silly snacks to make with your kids {easy + healthy}

When my kids get home from school, I always say something like, “Hey honey, I missed you! How was school?” And they reply: “Mom, what can I eat?” From the oldest to the youngest, every one of my children walks through the door after school and heads straight to the pantry to find a snack. And that often leads to disappointed kids, since they want cookies or candy while I want them to eat fruit, vegetables or protein.

So I came up with four new silly snacks that are fun enough to make your kids smile (mine did!), and healthy enough to keep mom happy too. Each of these snacks is super easy to make, with 5 or fewer ingredients, and each one is a healthy alternative to cookies or candy.

We started with an array of healthier ingredients like fruits, veggies, meats, cheeses, and nut spreads, and had fun combining them into four different silly snacks: a ham and cheese chick, a peanut butter banana bear, a blueberry pretzel butterfly, and a kiwi hazelnut flower.

Here’s a quick video that shows how to make each silly snack, and below the video you’ll find written instructions for each one as well. All my snacks start with a flatbread base (just use a cookie cutter to cut 3 small circles from a flatbread), but you could use an English muffin half if you prefer.

Peanut butter banana bear: 1 – Spread flatbread with peanut butter. 2 -Cut one slice of banana for the face and cut another slice of banana in half to make ears. 3 – Add candy eyes. 4 – Add a chocolate chip nose.

Ham and cheese chick: 1- Spread flatbread with ranch dressing. 2 – Add circular ham slices. 3 – Add circular cheese slice. From a different color cheese, cut a triangle for a beak. 4 – Dip shredded carrot in ranch dressing and place it over the cheese to make feathers. Add eyes.

Blueberry pretzel butterfly: 1 – Spread flatbread with cream cheese. 2 – Add a row of blueberries for the butterfly’s body. 3 – Cut the very bottom off of 2 pretzel twists. 4 – Place pretzel twists on either side of berries for wings.

Hazelnut kiwi flower: 1 – Spread flatbread with chocolate hazelnut spread. 2 – Peel and slice kiwi. 3 – Layer 5 kiwi slices to create a flower. 4 – Add a berry for the center.

My daughter also had a great time creating her own silly snacks – she made a number of other animals including a reindeer and a moose. While we were working on our healthy snacks, I set out some NESTLÉ® PURE LIFE® 8oz “Share-a-Smile™” Kid Designed Edition water bottles.

Each of these convenient 8 oz bottles features a fun kid-drawn design that my daughter loved looking at. Her favorite design is the one you see on the far left in the photo above, with the animals floating away with balloons. She especially liked that the chicken and panda look a bit like the chick and bear snacks we made! She wants to figure out how to make a surfing hippo next (second favorite bottle design). I love that the Nestlé Pure Life Kid Designed Edition bottles encourage kids to be more creative by featuring artwork created by other children.

The fun bottles also encourage choosing water as a healthier alternative to sugary drinks. Replacing a single 12-ounce, 140 calorie sugar sweetened beverage with water each day for a year can cut more than 65 cups of sugar from one’s diet.

But convincing kids to choose water can be tough. In fact, getting kids to drink enough water is one of the biggest “healthy habit” struggles moms have with their kids and studies have found that more than half of US kids are inadequately hydrated¹. Roughly 25 percent of kids report not drinking any water on two consecutive days²!

 Nestlé Pure Life Kid Designed Edition bottles are a great way to make healthy hydration fun for not only kids, but the entire family. 

Click here to learn more about NESTLÉ® PURE LIFE® and find the Nestlé Pure Life Kid Designed Edition bottles at a store near you.

Share what makes you smile and how theNestlé Pure Life Kid Designed Edition bottles help to keep your healthy hydration on track with the hashtag #NestleShareaSmile.

Find out more on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and the NESTLÉ® PURE LIFE® web page.

Thank you to Nestle® Pure Life® for sponsoring this blog post. All opinions are my own.

Sources:

¹ Kenney EL, et al. Prevalence of Inadequate Hydration Among US Children and Disparities by Gender and Race/Ethnicity: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2009-2012. Am J Public Health. 2015 Aug;105(8):e113-8.

² Drewnowski A, et al. Water and beverage consumption among children age 4-13y in the United States: analyses of 2005–2010 NHANES data Nutr J. 2013; 12: 85

For more food fun, learn how to make Backyard Bug Snacks here!