5 FUN Gifts To Encourage Healthy Eating

Looking for last minute gift ideas? Give the gift of good eating habits with one (or all!) of these five fun ways to encourage healthier eating, a gift that will last beyond the holiday season and for many New Years to come.

1.    Bring some fun & games to the table with

Crunch A Color

Created by a mom, Crunch a Color® is the award-winning healthy eating game that makes mealtime fun! Kids earn points for eating a balanced and colorful plate of veggies, fruits, proteins and grains. Bonus points for trying new foods! Crunch a Color® has been featured by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Pottery Barn Kids, Laurie David’s Family Dinner, Kiwi Magazine, Dr. Greene, and Yum Food & Fun For Kids, among many others, as a simple, fun and playful way to make healthy eating fun for the whole family.

Get the table talking! Created by kids for kids, Crunch a Color's award-winning Conversation Starters for Kids are sure to invite giggles and great conversation to your family table. Chock full of curious questions and delightful dilemmas, these 104 conversation starters help kids share their thoughts, grow their ideas, and make mealtime fun!

20% off for Bent on Better Lunches fans with code: bentonbetterlunches

We'll be playing these as a family when Sailor Boy gets home for Christmas Leave! Look for my Review & Giveaway in the New Year!

2. Get your family eating their 5 fruits & veggies a day 
with help from Today I Ate A Rainbow!

The Rainbow Kit from Today I Ate A Rainbow! is a rainbow-themed nutritional chart that encourages your child to "eat a rainbow" every day - a serving of fruit or veg in each of the 5 colours on the chart - and mark them with magnets as they do. It's also much more than a nutritional chart! It's a game, a challenge, an incentive... and it's fun! It even comes with a book!  We love ours - click here to read my review and catch our Rainbow Week!

The Rainbow Kits have recently been revamped! The charts are now a full magnet board that can be hung on a fridge or wall! Only $18.99 and if you buy 2 kits the shipping is free!  www.todayiatearainbow.com

3. Stuff a stocking with one of these adorable fruit & vegetable

Garden Heroes

These cute & cuddly plush beanie characters from Learning ZoneXpress are great incentives for making good eating choices!
Also from Learning ZoneXpress...

4. Inspire kids to help make healthy snacks with LANA's 
Fruit & Vegetable Snack Recipes

 

LANA makes healthy eating fun & easy! LANA cookbooks are spiral-bound with sturdy wipeable laminated pages. Full of the promise of tasty treats & kitchen fun, they're sure to bring a smile to any preschooler's face :)

The LANA (Learning About Nutrition through Activities) Preschool Program website, http://lananutrition.com/ is a wonderful resource for ways to help kids learn about making healthy eating choices through play. They even share FREE downloadable activities & recipes every month!

 

My smaller sproutlets & I have made many of the snacks within our LANA cookbook. Click the pics above to see a couple I've posted about :)

Get FREE shipping between now & Christmas from Learning ZoneXpress with the code BOBL Enter at checkout at http://www.learningzonexpress.com/

5.  Give bigger kids & grown-ups ideas for packing healthy lunches with the  EasyLunchboxes 

Cooking With Trader Joe's Cookbook

This fabulous cookbook is full of recipes contributed by your favourite lunch bloggers (Like me! That's one of mine at the top right, below! Simple & sweet.) It's perfect for anyone who packs a lunch in to school or work - or you could get it for yourself to give your family the gift of better lunches all year! 

Cooking with Trader Joe’s Cookbook: Easy Lunch Boxes is available at bookstores everywhere including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

Also brought to you by EasyLunchboxes, there's a new community for lunch packers - no matter what brand of containers, bags, coolers, or lunch boxes you use! Let's Pack Lunch! is the place to connect with the very people who packed the lunches in the cookbook, and more!

So there you go, a handful of my favourites, and where to find them. There aren't many shopping days left in this holiday season though, so if it's too late to order from the websites, you can still get some of these from Amazon!

Have a Happy & Healthy Holiday!

Food Adventure Friday + Rainbow Kit Winners!

I'm trying food colouring markers again. So many times I've been making a lunch and thought, "This could be so much cuter if I could use food markers to colour it",  but Pickle just hasn't been keen on me colouring his food. I read this interesting article about colour and appetite - which makes a lot of sense - but I don't think that's the case with him, I think it's more to do with his preference for the familiar - even though his sandwiches are always different, they are alwasy just bread and peanut butter. The last time I coloured on one I used Hershey's syrup, which he loves, and he didn't eat the coloured parts.

I decided to give the food colouring another go with this hopscotch sandwich. I gave Pickle the box to read and explained that the markers had the same stuff in them that is used to colour candy, and it wouldn't change the taste of his sandwich, just make it look more fun. He seemed OK with it this time! And hey, I guess this is a Food Adventure! So I'm linking to Food Adventure Fridays at Teaching Good Eaters :)

Another basic Lock & Lock for Beanstalk. I opted to leave the dishes by the sink and go to bed as soon as I tucked the sproutlets in, so his PlanetBox was not clean. I really ought to pick up a 2nd stainless container for him - he prefers the metal to the plastic these days. Maybe a LunchBots. If anyone has one of those, I'd love to hear your pros and cons. You've seen what I pack him, would you recommend a LunchBots, and if so, which one?

And what's this you see? I almost never buy fruit snacks for their lunches! It's not that I have anything against fruit snacks - I love sweets! If I knew they would eat them as a dessert, after they'd finished their healthy lunch, I'd pack them more often. But I know them, they will eat the gummies first, and I don't want them skipping out on the good stuff because they used up some of their precious 15 minutes of lunch time on the junk food :) 

Anyways, Beanstalk has Sprout to thank for these - she begged me to buy them for him because he likes Phineas & Ferb. How could I say no and squelch her thoughtfulness & generosity? ;) And the chocolate milk...  ok, I'll be honest, I had reached that point of grocery shopping with my little ones where I say "fine, just put it in the cart and let's go". And this was Birdie's choice, but then what do you know, she took a couple of sips, proclaimed it "yut" and asked for white milk. The chocolate milk boxes come in packs of 3 so Beanstalk and Bella got the other 2, surprise treats :)

Bella also has a bagel thins sandwich, with applewood smoked ham, sharp white & yellow cheddar, and red & yellow pepper flowers, and some celery with peanut butter for dipping.

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Wait, where is my head? I seriously did almost forget to pick and post winners of the Rainbow Kits from my Giveaway! Yes, Kits, plural - in case you missed the update, I've got 2 to give away now! OK, I'm off to  Random.org to draw winners right now!

(hum dum dee dum ... some time passes)

We have our winners! Congratulations commenters #48, Sarah F. at Bentoriffic, and #66, Pammy V. - you'll soon be charting rainbows with your little ones! Please contact me or respond to my email within 48 hours to claim your Rainbow Kits! 

To all who didn't win, don't be too sad - I've got a fabulous 15% discount coupon code especially for my readers! (Thank you Today I Ate A Rainbow!)  When you purchase a Rainbow Kit from Today I Ate A Rainbow! enter the code BENTO at checkout to get 15% off! 

What Makes A Rainbow? + Rainbow Kit Giveaway!

My sproutlets are getting over a couple of days of mild illness. Birdie, the youngest, was the first to start feeling better, so I encouraged her to eat some fruit, cheese & crackers by arranging them like a rainbow. To go with her rainbow snack, we read one of her favourite books - one we've had since Beanstalk was her age - What Makes a Rainbow? by Betty Ann Schwartz. 

 

It's such a cute book. With every turn of the page, another ribbon colour is added to the rainbow. Now, it's not accurate - there are only 6 colours in this rainbow, which ends with purple rather than indigo, then violet - but that doesn't bother me, she'll learn what really makes a rainbow eventually, and I only had 6 colours of muffin cups and fruit anyways :)

Birdie's favourite page is the blue one, because it has a bird on it (she got her nickname from the way she likes to chirp like a bird - she loves "birdies"). As we read each page, I encouraged her to eat the colour of fruit that matched the colour in the book. After we read through the book in the order it was meant to be read, she played with it, opening pages randomly then eating that colour.

Bella & Sprout wanted in on the fun too and between the 3 of them they ate the rainbow of fruit & cheese, leaving only a few bunny shaped pretzels :)

●  ●  ●  ● 

My sproutlets love to eat rainbows. Any time I want to get them to eat a variety, or try something new, I use rainbows in some way - arranging them in rainbow order, in rainbow coloured containers, or just encouraging them to add that colour to their Today I Ate A Rainbow chart. Hooray for eating rainbows!

  

Today I Ate A Rainbow!

I love our Today I Ate A Rainbow! Kit - it's really helped me get even the pickier sproutlets to eat enough fruits & veggies every day, and try new ones. It's even encouraged Pickle, our little man with autism and a very short list of likes, to try things - and that is amazing :)

The Rainbow Kit comes with all you see here:

• The Today I Ate A Rainbow chart
• The Rainbow Bunch book & bookmark
• Grocery shopping list
• Rainbow Magnet set

You might have noticed the Today I Ate A Rainbow! chart looks a little different from the one I reviewed in February... it's a new one!  There are now more fruit & vegetable suggestions for each colour, and lovely growing garden graphics. My boys really like this new version - although the girls are loyal to our original chart featuring Hannah, the original Rainbow Kid ♥ We've got both charts on our fridge now - one for the boys and one for the girls - which sometimes spurs a little healthy competition :)

The Today I Ate A Rainbow website is a super fun resource too, for caregivers and children alike! The site has a new look that matches the new chart, and there's lots of new free stuff, like fruit and veggie coloring pages,  and on the resource page, a Rainbow Eaters Certificate and a new chart called Today I Tried. Did you know it can take at least 10 exposures to a new food before it's accepted? I know in the past I've given up after only 3 or 4 tries... The Today I Tried chart can be a helpful visual tool, both as a reminder to caregivers not to give up too soon, and as a record for children to see their progress :)

One of my favourite parts of the Today I Ate A Rainbow! website is the video section,  Hannah & Kia cook up healthy fun in the Rainbow Kitchen. My little girls and I made kale chips following along with them!

I know my kidlets are more likely to try foods they had a hand in preparing, and cooking along with the videos is fun and easy for even beginners to follow :)

And my sproutlets love The Rainbow Song.

Sprout & Birdie sang The Rainbow Song on Green Day, 

so this time big sister Mia Bella wanted a turn:

Want your own Rainbow Kit?

You're in luck! March is Nutrition Month, so the wonderful Kia, creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow! chart & kit, author of The Rainbow Bunch,  and advocate of rainbow eating for good nutrition, is offering my readers another chance to win a new Rainbow Kit of their own!

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post!

Visit Today I Ate A Rainbow! then come back here and leave a comment telling me & Kia something you liked  ♥

I'd also love it if you would visit the Today I Ate A Rainbow on Facebook and Like them - you can make a bonus entry if you do, or already did - just make another comment saying so :) And if you also Like Bent On Better Lunches on Facebook, or you already did, you can make another comment saying so! That's 3 chances to win :)

The winner will be chosen (by comment # using Random.org) and announced on Friday, March 23rd.  Good luck! And remember, I need a way to contact you if you win, so make sure your comment includes one! Thank you :)

Bonus! I will now be drawing 2 winners!
Thank you Today I Ate A Rainbow!

Disclosure: I received a Rainbow Kit from Today I Ate A Rainbow! to review.  No other compensation or payment was given. All opinions & descriptions are my own.

The Rainbow Kit Giveaway is Closed. Thanks for for entering!

Nutella Day & Rainbow Kit Winner!

Yesterday was World Nutella Day. I had never heard of it until I read about it on Lunches Fit For a Kid's facebook page, but thought it sounded like a great idea - I would make my sproutlets Nutella sandwich treats in their Monday lunches, for World Nutella Day - except, I somehow got the day wrong...
They still count though, because I made them Sunday night :)

Bella's pretty in pink lunch has celery sticks by request, with peanut butter for dipping - in the little pink container, with a fruit leather heart on the lid - green grapes, Granny Smith apple hearts, and a little Nutella sandwich heart.

Beanstalk has ham, fruit leather roll-ups (I sliced one into 3 pieces), apple stars and bars, and 2 sandwich "cookies" - 1 Nutella, 1 peanut butter.

I am trying out one of the divided trays from our new Lock & Lock square box in our good old 4 square box. I like how the divider comes right up to the lid.

Pickle declined a Nutella sandwich. I made him a bunch of peanut butter sandwich shapes to go with the geometry he's been learning about at school. He also got some yogurt and lemonade.

Today I Ate A Rainbow! Giveaway Time!

Today's the day someone wins my Giveaway of a Rainbow Kit from Today I Ate A Rainbow! Wow, there were so many entries, with so many great comments! Thanks to everyone who followed my  Rainbow Week! I hope you enjoyed it. Making colour-themed lunches was fun, but I am glad to go back to doing anything goes lunches - sticking to one colour was more difficult than I thought it would be! The list of fruits & vegetables in each colour of the rainbow on the Today I Ate A Rainbow! chart was a big help though :) Okay, it's time to announce the winner!

The winning comment is #57!

Update: Sadly, the winner neither contacted me to claim her prize, nor provided any contact information for me to reach her, so I will be drawing and announcing a new winner this Saturday, February 11th.

And to answer one of the questions asked in the giveaway post comments, yes I do think it could work with an older child. It's been working with my 10 year old... he's been extremely picky his whole life. You might be interested in my recent post: Eating Real Food. We have been using it as an incentive for him to earn video game privileges, and he's been trying things. He still hasn't liked much - but he's willing to try something before saying he doesn't like it now, and that's all I can ask.

Thank you all who entered! I'll be doing another review & giveaway, of another fun healthy eating tool, within the next couple of weeks, so keep visiting :)

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!