If you’re kids haven’t been eating their fruit lately, here’s a simple twist to make fruit more fun: Put it on a stick! Because I worry about pricks from pointed skewers, I recommend threading children’s kabobs onto lollipop sticks instead.
Ingredients:
Veronika wants to paint every time big brother gets paints and brushes, but I worry still that she’ll put the paintbrush in her mouth. With this fruit paint, there’s no need to fret; these brushes were made for tasting!
To prepare three colors of paint, I pureed a batch each of: blueberries, bananas, and kiwi. For the bananas and kiwi, I thickened the “paint” slightly with a little applesauce from a pouch, and then added a few drops of all-natural food coloring (in yellow and green, respectively) to amp up the color. Here’s the before of the kiwi:
Versus the after:
I used frozen blueberries, which pureed into a deep, thick purple that needed no embellishment. If you use fresh blueberries, you may find you also want a squeeze of applesauce and a few drops of blue food coloring.
I set out all three colors in paper cups for Veronika, along with paintbrushes and a thick piece of watercolor paper.
Say no more, she absolutely loved it! First she just wanted to dip the paintbrush into the blueberry paint over and over. I prompted her to think about her sense of smell as she played, the fresh fruit filling her nostrils.
Then she moved paintbrush to paper experimentally. She loved discovering she could make blobs and swirls.
I worried that the blueberry would stain little fingers and clothes, so I gently pushed the banana and kiwi into prime position. She was equally entranced!
She kept busy with this for quite some time before eventually dumping some of the kiwi paint onto the paper.
At this point I simply moved the paper aside and it was fun for her to smear.
Did she taste it? Not really, actually! I think she might have gotten a tiny lick of the banana once, but mostly she seemed happy to paint with it.
It was fantastic to see her so engaged with this artistically, and to know that even a nibble was worry-free.
Here’s a little challenge for your baby if you want to keep him or her entertained the next time they sit in a highchair.
I let Veronika see a few pieces of banana (cut into safe pieces) and placed them on her tray.
Note: Any other soft fruit would work just as well here, like soft ripe peaches or apricots. Cover the fruit pieces with one bowl and place a second bowl next to it. Ideally, I would have liked my bowls to match but certainly Veronika didn’t seem to mind the mismatch.
Encourage your baby to find the fruit and pick up the bowl it’s hiding under.
If the fruit was underneath, I made a big show of it and celebrated with a hearty cheer.
Arguably Veronika was more interested in the bowls themselves than in the fruit she discovered, but it still made for a fun little game as I prepped dinner. It certainly kept her hands busy!
If your child seems excited about it, play with three bowls to make it more challenging.
As fun as it is to draw the rainbow or craft with the rainbow, it’s even more fun to eat it! Make these simple kebabs for a healthy and educational snack.
Start off with some fine-motor skills practice by letting your child use a kid-friendly knife on some of the larger fruit pieces, like pineapple and melon. Smaller items (blueberries, grapes), don’t need to be cut.
Now assemble all of your fruits on a plate, making sure you have something in every color of the rainbow. Suggestions are as follows:
Red: strawberries, raspberries
Orange: oranges
Yellow: pineapple
Green: kiwi, honeydew
Blue: blueberries
Purple: grapes
Encourage your child to thread the fruits onto their skewer in rainbow order. Travis was so busy stealing nibbles of fruit that he let me assemble most of them, though! He was most excited by the pineapple, which I don’t buy very often: “I want a yellow one!”
If you want to add whimsy to your skewers, consider a marshmallow “cloud” or two!
Overall, this snack ranks high for being both healthy and fun.
joyful parenting 