I always wondered how we’re “coded” when it comes to food? How is it that someone becomes a “coffee lover” or a “tea person”? How is it that one person hates chocolate, while others can’t stand eating spicy dishes? Just as adults, every child is different. Some will eat almost anything while others cannot stand the taste of certain foods.

In a supermarket, when you’re walking between the rows filled with foods for kids, what do you see? Colorful, interesting, cute packaged products all over the shelves. There’s so much there that you don’t know where to turn your attention first. Every product is competing with another.

Where will your child’s eyes land? Which one will be the winner, making them want it so much more over the rest? For children, it usually comes down to eye-catching packaging. They don’t know what’s really inside. If a girl has “Frozen fever,” she likely wants anything with Elsa on it.

Creating Edible Food Crafts for Children

Most of the time in supermarkets, these “attention-hunter” snacks are not the healthiest foods for your kids. Today, there’s also a new element of competition where companies are competing with each other on the “healthiest” snacks. Today you see buzz words like sugar-free, gluten-free, no artificial ingredients, and so on.

And that’s awesome to see nicely wrapped healthy food. So no wonder that after all these trips to the supermarket, or just watching advertisements on TV, that most children want these products instead of plain old “boring” fruits and vegetables. That’s why it’s your job to create fun edible food crafts as snacks to make them way more interesting.

You have to “sell” it to them. Think of it like an art form. You have various natural accessories, all of which have so many possibilities, making you the ultimate packaging designer now.

Here are some inspirational food ideas that you can make for your children to turn “boring” foods fun into something fun and exciting . However, it doesn’t have to be exactly the same as the foods pictured. You can change it however you like based on whatever ingredients you have in stock at home. In my experience, once you start making these snacks, you’ll get better and better, and more ideas will come to your mind about how to make food fun again.

Lion head

• One large circular apple slice from the center
• One whole banana sliced
• Two tangerine pieces for the ears
• One blueberry for the nose
• Rosemary twigs for the whispers
• Black seeds for the eyes

Ladybug

• One red apple cut in quarters
• Blueberries cut in half to stick to the apple’s surface
• Rosemary for the legs and antennae

Mushrooms

• One banana cut into different lengths
• Strawberries: cut the top part off and use the leves for the grass
• Black seeds for eyes
• Rosemary for the mouth

Later I realized, that i could have put white dots on the hat from marshmallows by cutting them in half and sticking them to it.

Caterpillar

• Grapes cut into halves
• Marshmallows cut in half to stick the head for eyes
• Black seeds for the eye pupils
• Rosemary for the antennae and mouth

Bee

• Eggo waffle for the base
• Blueberries
• Apple slices
• Rosemary twigs
• Raisins for eyes
• Marshmallows

If your kid is so picky that he/she doesn’t want to try sweets, or the opposite, would’t eat fruits like grapes, try to mix and match ingredients to suit their taste buds. Always use something he/she likes. This is also a great way to make children try new foods by making it fun.

Butterfly

• Two large pretzels
• M&M’s
• Grapes
• Rosemary

Turtle

• Sliced apples
• Grape
• Tangerine slices
• Sunflower seeds

+1 Rainbow

It’s not a healthy snack, but my kids love rainbows. I’m showing it because they can help you to make this, and you can help to educate them about the rainbow’s colors in the process.

• M&M’s
• Marshmallows

You can see that I used black seeds and rosemary a lot. This is because it was easy to make the heads and antennae from those. It’s not something that every kitchen would have, but you don’t have to run to the store for it. You can replace these with raisins and thinly cut carrot slices.

I enjoyed making these easy, healthy (except for the rainbow of course) snacks for them. It was fun to create this way and I certainly never thought of doing this before. And now, it’s really got me thinking what else can I make from “boring” fruits and vegetables that could make them fun to ear. There are so many possibilities that surely I will make another post with more ideas.

And the best part, that you can snack while you’re crafting!:)

And they’ll certainly appreciate the endeavor.