Well, we made it through Big Brother’s first week of Kindergarten! This Back to School time made it necessary to come up with some good meals & snacks. It’s been quite a while since I’d done a muffin tin meal of any kind. So, I decided it was the perfect time to bring those back!
I don’t know what it is about eating food out of a muffin tin that makes it so appealing, but the kids love this! Everything always gets eaten when I serve food this way! So, I decided to theme things around some of Big Brother’s school activities this past week. I think they’ve been doing some assessments of what the kids know, as they’ve been doing activities with shapes and colors. Pretty basic stuff. He came home with a rainbow picture, so I thought a rainbow snack would be fitting!
It is so easy to do–just as long as you have various colors of food. For an extra healthy snack, I decided on all fruit with a yogurt dipping sauce. I didn’t have any orange or yellow fresh fruit on hand, but that was an easy fix. I just used some canned pineapple and a Del Monte Mandarin Orange fruit cup! Easy peasy!
The whole snack was great for both boys (ages 2 & 5). We went over the colors & fruit names mostly for the benefit of Little Brother. Then, we talked about the letters & why they were there (r for red, o for orange, etc). He especially liked the letters that matched the color and the fruit–like green grapes and blue blueberries!
Fun, huh?! A perfect ROY G. BIV snack! 🙂
Another fun #smartsnack muffin tin idea is doing one with all shapes, like this:
It includes Triscuit Thin Crisps triÂanÂgles, string cheese cirÂcles, heart beet cookie, peach squares (from a Del Monte fruit cup), olive ovals (Big Brother deemed them ovals instead of cirÂcles), and  ham squares. It was fun findÂing foods that already had their own shapes.  Then, I just cut the string cheese into cirÂcles and the lunch meat ham into squares.
The Del Monte fruit cups are such an easy back to school option– perfect for lunches or snacks. For Big Brother’s Kindergarten, we have to supply a class snack once a month and the individual fruit cups are on the “approved” snack list. So, we picked a few containers (the mandarin oranges, diced peaches, and diced pears) up while doing some back to school shopping at Walmart. For more from the shopping trip, you can check out my google+ album here.
For more fun back to school options, you can check out last year’s round up of fun ideas and you can download these adorable, free lunch notes printables from Angie over at the Country Chic Cottage. It’s such a cute idea. I can’t wait to do that next year once Big Brother is reading on his own! 🙂
For more great snack & lunch ideas, you can follow Del Monte on Facebook and Twitter.
Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Del Monte #CBias #SocialFabric #SmartSnack. As always, all opinions and experiences are my own.
Linked to: *Muffin Tin Monday, *Show & Share Saturday
15 Responses
I musrt try this with oldest Grandson. He is struggling with colors. A fun and tasty way to learn. 🙂
I bet he’ll love it! Only takes a couple of extra minutes to prepare & has a big effect! 🙂
What a great way to serve lunch! I love all the stickers on the packages.
Such a great idea! I wonder if this would get my niece to try a few new things. (Such a picky eater!)
Very cute! We are learning rainbows this week with my little one and I think this will make a very cute muffin meal.
Yum! We love rainbow tins!
Great Idea – sometimes it’s all in the presentation.
love the rainbow muffin tin. you are always so creative. 🙂
You are so creative! This little muffin tin is a great way to keep snacks orderly and prevent a mess!
Thanks, Jenn! The kids seriously LOVE meals like this! Sometimes it’s still messy, but so worth it!
I love the magnetic letters on your muffin tin! So creative! My boys gobble up their muffin tin meals so fast too!
Thanks, Trina! It was such an easy addition! Isn’t it funny how much they love muffin tin meals?!
I do love the muffin tins!! Delicious and beautiful and nutritious!
This is a wonderful idea for presenting a variety of food to children. If you have a picky eater, make sure to fill at least 1/2 of the compartments with healthy foods the child is familiar and the others with healthy foods that are not familiar and then encourage the child to try at least one bite from each. This provides a fun way for your child to try new foods and expand his or her pallet, but have something to fall back on if it is not to his or her liking. The key is making sure to present healthy foods.