Rainbow Week : Blue & Indigo + Read.Explore.Learn.

We've reached the end of our Rainbow Week! I'm cheating a little and combining Blue and Indigo - since there are only 5 school days... and there just aren't that many truly blue foods :) We did have some delicious blue potatoes with dinner last night though, love their colour, so fun!

Blue & Indigo

Bella's blue lunch contains the word blue cut from white cheddar, blue corn chips and salsa (in the container under the cheese), purple grapes with blue seal picks, and grape jelly roll-ups for "dessert". Bella suddenly claims she no longer likes blueberries (no reason why, she just doesn't) but blueberry-pomegranate fruit leather is still okay... (okay, whatever... silly sproutlet) so that's what she has for snack.

Lunch for the man. We've decided that the blue-lidded Easy Lunchboxes are his so he knows which lunch he can take, since sometimes I make Bella's the night before too and most of the time he leaves for work before I wake. 

I had various leftover meats in our fridge, so Sailor Boy has pork tenderloin and a sausage kebab, atop a salad with purple cabbage, a little cup of raspberry vinaigrette (lid off for photo), blueberries, and leftover cooked purple cabbage. I like to make kebabs of his meats when I give him a salad - that way if he doesn't want to eat them in the salad, or wants to heat them up, he only has to pick out a couple of skewers rather than a dozen or so little pieces. He also has a blueberry yogurt, and a Lunchbox Love note  ♥ 

We had more cabbage to use up so I cooked it last night and made a leftovers bento for my lunch. Blue potatoes, chicken, and purple cabbage:

My cabbage is a much more vibrant purple than the cabbage in Sailor Boy's lunch! That cabbage was cooked in the wok, on the stove, with red wine vinegar. Mine was cooked in the microwave with a little water. It came out really bright! Check out the water left in the bowl!

Rainbow 
Read. Explore. Learn.

This morning I prepared the girls a Nibble Tray for snack later. I planned to offer the snack after we read The Rainbow Bunch - which is all about eating a rainbow of healthy fruits and veggies - so I took a picture of them together.

Birdie grabbed a blueberry as I was taking the pic of the book cover...

... I was about to tell her the snack was for later - but she didn't want to eat it, she just wanted to match each colour food to the corresponding Rainbow Kid :)

The Rainbow Bunch

 by Kia Robertson

This isn't the first time we've read The Rainbow Bunch - it came with our Rainbow Kit, and of course they wanted to read it as soon as we opened that - but it's the first time this week :) The Rainbow Bunch starts out "There once were five kids... who didn't eat right" and tells about how those kids want to learn and play and grow, but they are too tired and sick - because they eat junk food instead of fruits & veggies - and how they learn about how fruits and vegetables can make them healthy, and how they begin to feel good and have fun once they start eating their rainbow. My little girls really love seeing their Today I Ate a Rainbow! chart in the story. They like to shout "Hey, we have that!" and usually ask for a healthy snack for their rainbow  ♥ Today I'm all set with their rainbow nibble tray :)

And to go with our rainbow reading and rainbow snack...

More Rainbow Fun!

Recycled Crayon Craft

I saw this craft last year in Little Birdie Secrets and knew we had to do it one day. It's one of the ways I justified to hubby my purchasing a bunch of shaped silicone muffin pans - restoring to usefulness all our broken crayons :)

Step 1: Peel any paper from your crayon pieces. My little Birdie loves to peel the paper from crayons most of our crayons are already "naked" - so we got to skip that step!  Step 2: Arrange your crayon pieces in a silicone muffin pan, breaking them more if needed, until each cup is at least 2/3 full. Birdie liked this part, being allowed to break crayons :)

Step 3: Bake in 200 degree oven for about half an hour, or until everything looks completely melted. Step 4: Carefully remove from oven and allow to cool on a flat surface, out of the reach of children.

Step 5: Once they are completely cool and solid, pop them out of the molds!

Ta-dah! New crayons :)

We made these ones as a birthday gift for Birdie's little preschool friend, and packaged them up in a waxed paper lined wooden box from a Melissa & Doug toy we got years ago, that I saved because "you never know when you might need a cute little wooden box". See, Sailor Boy? ;)

Bundled with a big package of construction paper and tied with a rainbow ribbon, I think they make a lovely gift for a 3 year old.

Rainbow Lunch Love

Here are some rainbow lunches by some of my lunch blogger friends:

Astrid of Lunches Fit For A Kid also did a Rainbow Week with a fabulous variety of colourful and healthy lunches. And she makes the most amazing Rainbow bread!

Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You has heaps of examples of eating a rainbow - click her lovely rainbow bento below to see them all!

A rainbow & a smile :)

I hope you've enjoyed my Rainbow Week! I know my sproutlets have ♥

If you haven't yet, check out my review of Today I Ate A Rainbow! and enter to win a Rainbow Kit of your own!