Green Lunches

Kimball is a bright boy.  When he was 2 years old, we were walking on the sidewalk and he yelled out in astonishment, "Look Mom, a triangle!"  When I looked down to where he was pointing, I indeed saw a triangle shape in the cement.  I was surprised and impressed.  He loves shapes and lines and what he calls "math".  What he doesn't love is colors.  Try as I might, this kid just doesn't care what color things are.  I've tried playing Candyland, he's not interested.  Oral quizes as we're getting him dressed, non responsive.  Even File folder games, he loves to match the colors, but don't make him talk about them!  So, when I was reading a friend's blog about teaching her son colors, I immediately was interested.  She used theme colored lunches in muffin tins.  Apparently they're very poplular, but it was the first I'd heard of them.  So I decided to give it a try.

 

All for the sake of this cute little stinker.

 I decided to focus on the color green (since he didn't seem to catch on to the color during St. Patrick's).  After a week of green lunches, I'm still not sure Kimball cares what the color green is, but it's still had great benefits to our home!

I bought them all their own muffin pans, and they were very excited about it.  Then I had them help pick out green food at the store.  They were coming up with all sorts of new ideas! One day I suggested we have left over pizza instead of the muffin tin lunches.  "NO!" they cried, "We want our green food!"  Okay, okay, they twisted my arm and I cooked them up some green beans and such.  All the sudden I was getting them to eat spinach, green beans, edamame, sprouts, and whatever else, as long as it fit into the muffin tin.  I was really blown away when we were at the store and they wanted to try some California roll because it had seaweed inside of it. 

Here's one of the meals I did:  Sushi, grapes, olives/pickles, 

 

 

Grammy's delicious green salsa, and pistachio pudding.

Elsie's trying the California roll.  "Not bad" was her response.

This may not be too phenominal in some people's homes.  My kids aren't super picky kids, but they are kids with many food apprehensions.  For me, this was ground breaking.  I took advantage and started teaching them all about the vitamins and healthy things inside green food, and why we can be like superheros when we eat them.  It worked like a charm. 

Kimball is taking a bite of a spinach quesadilla.  Mmmm.

This coming week we decided to eat orange foods.  I'm wondering if I can really get them to eat squash and sweet potatoes.  It hasn't worked in the past, but I have renewed hope.  We've never eaten meals out of muffin tins before either.  Plus, they picked them out themselves at the store.  It's been fun and I hope it continues to be fun. 

Great smiles!  Great fun!