Making Meals More Fun

Ok, let me start by saying I'm not trying to be Martha Stewart. Or Mother of the Year. But I am a nerd and a former teacher, so when I'm feeling really industrious, I like to add a little fun and possibly even some learning to our every day activities. An easy, fun thing we like to do is to make our same old lunches a bit more interesting. They might learn something, but more importantly, they EAT...happily. It's not hard or I wouldn't do it. I have three kids under the age of 5 (have you noticed how I like to repeat this?), I have laundry and cleaning to keep up with, so it's not like I spend every waking moment trying to force learning on my kids or make their day "creatively stimulating." I just throw simple things in here and there.

Obviously, you can do things like talk about how sandwich (or Sonic) starts with an S, or macaroni (and McDonald's) with an M. But if you want to go a step further, you can make an octopus from the ocean on a mountain of macaroni and hit two letters at once.








...or use a cookie cutter ($1 at Wal Mart, I have tons) to make your sandwiches into shapes. Like a butterfly with a banana or a pumpkin with a peach. Or a foot with fish (goldfish crackers), or a ghost with goldfish and grapes.
If your children are a bit older, you can serve carrots and crackers with celery and talk about how C makes two sounds. Or cheese and chicken and chips. I'm getting excited here...told you I was a nerd.

I do math sometimes too...sort the grapes and the raisins into two groups (M&Ms and Skittles are good too!)...count how many are in each pile and compare which one is more or less. You could even graph the results. (I swear I haven't gone that far with it...yet.)

But now I have a problem...I've been doing the same stuff for a long time. I need some new ideas. I know I have a few readers who homeschool and thought you might have easy, quick ideas. If you are a dork like me and haven't spent the last few minutes laughing hysterically at me, send me some of your ideas...please?