fun - The Balanced Kitchen

I am in the midst of three (3!) weeks with the kids home without summer camp, which means that I am doing that juggling act many of us experience at some point during the summer when we are trying to get work done and also provide fun and engaging activities for our kids (although I am definitely also a believer in free time when kids entertain themselves and even get bored!). Our plans for these weeks include some house projects (cleaning and reorganizing the playroom!), some fun out-of-the-house activities, and cooking projects to stock of the freezer for camp lunches.

As I have written about before, cooking with kids is great for many reasons including decreasing picky eating, introducing new foods, helping them to understand where their food comes from, giving them confidence, and introducing them to math concepts, but it is also a lot of fun, especially when they can get their hands dirty!

If cooking with your kids is a daunting thought, try one of these recipes to get you started. They are favorites in our house!…

I don’t know about in your house, but in my house summer is also a time of voracious eating! The kids are so active whether at home or at camp that they get really hungry. Really hungry. With that kind of clamoring for snacks, it can be tempting to just fall back on the pre-packaged snack foods that are so convenient.

In trying to figure all of this out for my family, I have decided that it is important to try to maintain the snack and mealtime structure we have during the school year. I try to stick to our snack routine to make sure that the mealtimes are still the main focus. For us that means a small mid-afternoon snack (now that my kids are older the mid-morning snack has disappeared– at least on most days), which always includes either a fruit or a vegetable, or both. Recently, that hasn’t been cutting it for my 9-year-old in the late afternoons, so I have told him that he can eat as many fruits and vegetables as he wants between afternoon snack and dinner. That way, he can munch away and I don’t need to worry about empty calories. Win-win! That being said, however, I do think it is important not to get so bogged down in the rules that we forget to have fun and relax. Afterall, we want our kids to have a healthy and happy relationship with food, rather than a rigid one, so there is definitely a time and place for flexibility and ice cream!

Here are some of our fun, favorite, simple snacks that help us make it through the summertime snack attacks:…

4 Cooking Projects to Do with Your Kids, Plus Watermelon Water

Healthy Summertime Snacks