Every moment is a teachable moment, including meal times.  Whether your child eats at home or is away for a meal, you can find ways to make it fun and educational!

What follows are ideas that I have gathered from fellow parents through observation in my pre-k classroom.  There are loads more - share in the comments if you can think of others!

1. Sandwich letters: create a “letter puzzle” by cutting a sandwich to resemble a letter (in my class, I have a parent that cuts the Letter Of The Week for each sandwich).  Leave the “extra” sandwich parts to create a puzzle for your child.
2. Eating the Art: using diluted food coloring, paint the letter of the week on your child’s sandwich.  Or cookie.  Or graham cracker.  Or cheese.
3. Create a lunch with items that begin with the same letter: bread, banana, beans, biscuit, and bacon for letter B, and cheese, carrots, corn, cup (of fruit!), and even a “circle sandwich” for letter C!
4. Label baggies, foil and/or plastic storage items with the names of foods inside.  Sharpie pens will work on any of these surfaces (use masking tape if you don’t want to write directly on something).
5. Write a note for your child on a napkin in the lunch box, using as many words with the same letter as possible.  For instance, in a week where letter P is being introduced, perhaps say something like, “Have a perfectly pleasant day.  Be polite and play nice!”  Even if the child can’t read, the teacher can read the note to him or her, and the child can identify the letters.

In our house, we usually get stuck in a rut during the summertime.  Sandwiches, chips, string cheese, yogurt, repeat.  And, by this time, we’re all quite sick of peanut butter and Cheetos.  This week, though, I did something a little different that you can do, too, with basically anything you serve.

It started with fruit.  I keep a wide variety of fruits in the fridge, especially during the summer months, because I am a fruit fanatic.  And, I’m trying to get my kids to be the same way, especially with the massive amounts of vitamins and “good stuff” in each piece.  But, my kids are not content to eat “just” an apple or a handful of grapes.  In the end, it was the presentation that brought them around. 

I usually take a serving bowl and add whatever fruit I have on hand in it in bite-sized pieces.  Some of our favorites are bananas, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, watermelon. canteloupe, and pears.  Apples are okay, but they tend to be a bit tough to stab onto a skewer.  Then, I hand out the skewers and let the kids go to town we have bamboo and meta skewers; both work well). 

Sometimes, my older son has nothing but grapes on his skewer.  Other times, he’s got four or five different fruits on his kebab (alternate spellings: kabob, kibob), and he patterns them onto his skewer.  The great thing is my younger son mimics his brother, so fruit patterns are quite popular with him, too.

But don’t stop with fruit!  We like ham and cheese kebabs, pizza kebabs (pepperoni, string cheese, and breadsticks, then dip in spaghetti or pizza sauce), fajita kebabs (veggies with chicken or beef fajitas and bite-sized tortilla chunks), and even macaroni and cheese with hot dog kebabs!  Kebabs are great for dessert, too - angel food cake chunks interspersed with fruit and drizzled with a little chocolate or brownies with fruit…whatever sounds great and fits on a skewer!

So, when your kids get into that eating rut, no matter what time of year it is, bring out the skewers and serve up some fun.  And, leave us a comment with your favorite combination!