Kids’ Kitchen: 5 Bedtime Snacks
This month’s Virtual Book Club for Kids’ selection is Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney.
After reading the book with my group, one of the children pointed a very obvious solution to Llama Llama’s inability to fall asleep: he hadn’t had a bedtime snack!
Well, of course, we had to come up with some healthy red bedtime snacks to help solve the problem!
We settled on five kid-made snacks that would be easy to make just before bedtime and had some natural red colour. (I also tried to encourage options that were good sources of protein, which can help prevent nighttime rumblings.)
What’s great about these easy kid-made snacks is that they are versatile according to your child’s level of kitchen skill, and most ingredients can be swapped out for something else that your child may prefer (jam instead of peanut butter, applesauce instead of yogurt, etc).
1. Strawberries & Yogurt
A simple kid-made snack of strawberries and yogurt can be made by children of any kitchen skill level.
Older children can hull the strawberries and then use a strawberry slicer to cut them, before spooning out some yogurt into a small dish and arranging the strawberries on top.
Younger children can spoon out the yogurt, and arrange pre-cut strawberries for their snack.
Check out our hulling strawberries and spooning practical life lesson.
2. Apple Slices with Peanut Butter & Granola
While we usually use an apple section cutter when the kids cut their own apples, Ella took this creative approach to slicing apples, so we improvised and used a cannoli tube to cut out the apple cores.
We then used a butter spreader to spread natural peanut butter on the apples, and sprinkled a bit of homemade granola overtop.
Check out our apple cutting practical life lesson.
3. Cherry Smoothie
Cherries are a great natural sleep aid, so we experimented with a simple homemade smoothie.
We combined a handful of pitted cherries, two tablespoons of yogurt, a cup of milk, and 6 ice cubes in a blender and pulsed to a smooth but frothy texture.
Check out our olive pitting practical life lesson, which works equally well for cherries!
4. Strawberry Jam on Toast
We used homemade strawberry vanilla jam, so it didn’t turn out as red as store-bought jam would have looked (and the rye bread doesn’t help). We use these cheap, wooden toast tongs to safely retrieve our toast from the toaster, and a butter spreader to add the jam and cut the toast.
5. Red Pepper Hummus & Veggies
We love red pepper hummus with veggies for a quick snack, or this (surprisingly not spicy) jalapeno greek yogurt dip from Costco.
Check out these other awesome Llama Llama Red Pajama activities for kids:
What a clever list of bedtime snacks to compliment Llama Llama Red Pajama!
I love these ideas because they are healthy and would go great with a bedtime story.