Butterfly-shaped pasta is perfect for springtime, and this recipe is simple enough for even a preschooler to help. It’s a great activity for talking about all the verbs that go into a recipe, too.
Scoop peas into a bowl of cooked pasta.
Spoon in pesto.
Mix it all together.
Sprinkle with your favorite non-dairy cheese!
Thanks to Veronika’s latest High Five magazine for this interactive cooking lesson!
A small shell pasta (such as orecchiette) topped with creamy vegan ricotta and marinara sauce makes a toddler-friendly alternative to large stuffed shell pasta.
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I love jumbo stuffed pasta shells, but the effort of making them is wasted on my kids since I just need to cut the pasta into smaller pieces. This recipe relies on small pasta shells instead, for a kid-friendly riff on a grown-up favorite.
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File this recipe under quick and easy. It’s equally delicious served warm, cold, or at room temperature!
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Combine two kid favorites (pizza and pasta!) in this quick meal. I had originally intended to use wagon wheel pasta, but opted for sea-themed shapes instead, like boats and sea horses. Any fun-shaped pasta adds to the dish’s whimsy.
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Butterfly-shaped farfalle pasta add a whimsical touch to this easy lunch. With my son home from in-person school by lunchtime now, we’ll be making lots of new midday recipes in the weeks to come!
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I love activities that introduce new textures to a toddler, even if they might seem a little gross to us grown-ups. Veronika has no qualms about getting her hands dirty, so on today’s menu was mud worms!
I cooked up a batch of linguine for the “worms”, and then placed them on a shallow tray that we could take out to the patio. Now we just needed to bury them in “dirt” a.k.a. chocolate pudding.
She gleefully began scooping through, using both fingers and a sand shovel
In retrospect, I would have used a lot more pudding and a lot fewer “worms”, as this wasn’t really hunting or digging. We just had lots of worms crawling all over the tray! But of course the pretend play was a bit advanced for her anyway, and she loved scooping.
We got our fingers in the mixture together and used words like “slimy” and “goopy” as we played.
When the noodles landed on the patio, they did sort of look like little worms after a rainstorm.
Then Veronika decided it was even more fun to scoop them up from the tray and toss them on top of other items on the patio.
Admittedly that made clean-up a little tougher, but she was having so much fun I didn’t stop her! All in all this was good gooey fun.
I wish I could claim there was some secret, healthy ingredient in this homemade mac ‘n’ cheese. But nope. This is pure comfort food, and sometimes that’s exactly what the family needs.
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Travis’s latest Raddish Kids included this cute lesson, a chance to learn more about noodles and pasta – and the difference between them!
To start things off, I set out a station where he could explore a wide variety of pasta shapes and sizes. Our array included: rotini, cavatappi, spaghetti, elbow macaroni, small shells, and penne.
I challenged him to talk about the differences and similarities that he noticed. Some were long (spaghetti), some were short (cavatappi). Some were straight (penne), some were curly (rigatoni), etc.
This is a fun chance to introduce your kids to the idea of a Venn diagram, showing how categories can overlap. Older kids, especially, might enjoy drawing detailed diagrams, although we kept ours simple.
Once the exploration was done, we set up a game! Travis’s goal was to match up each pasta shape with its name, using yarn to connect them. This was also great for sight-reading!
He was so into it that he wanted to snack on cooked spaghetti. This made for the perfect nosh while we watched a few suggested videos that delved deeper into the history of pasta.
Make sure to check out a world map for a visual of key countries, like China and Italy.
We had to finish with fun stories, of course. Raddish suggested The Great Pasta Escape by Miranda Paul and Noodle Magic by Roseanne Greenfield Thong, among others.
I was surprised to see no mention of Strega Nona, the most classic spaghetti story I can think of, so we added that in. Afterwards, both kids wanted to play “Strega Nona” with a magic pot and leftover dry spaghetti, which was perhaps the best part of the whole lesson.
This hearty recipe makes enough for the whole family, one of those rare gems that pleases kids and adults equally.
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We like this topped with the Parmesan shreds from Follow Your Heart!
joyful parenting 