My most recent “menu” for my son’d 4th birthday was easy and a hit.

• Pizza: We ordered pizza from a local favorite pizzaria.
• Fresh fruit salad: You can buy what is in season and on sale to keep cost down. You can also choose to cut it up your self or buy the pre-existing fruit trays that are usually available at the grocery store. Be sure to that fruit pieces are cut small enough and cut grapes in half to prevent choking hazard.
• Munchies: We had pretzels and corn chips.
• Mixed Salad: Make this at the last minute. We assembled fresh spinach, gorgonzola cheese, cranberries, sliced almonds, and red onion and offered a couple of dressings.
• Drinks: Bottled water, assorted sodas, box juices and capri sun’s kept everyone happy.
• Store bought birthday cake.

Other good options for the main entree (instead of pizza) are sandwich trays which you can get at the grocery deli, subway or other sandwich spots. Also, Costco and stores like it have tons a great prepared food and can provide inspiration if you just go and look around. We had some success for a different party with some frozen lasagnas that you can heat and serve. (Be sure to check cooking time before the day of the party to make sure you have it ready in time.)

Mini-Sized Foods and Portions

Kids love to see foods designed for their size and the portion control avoids waste. Mini pizzas (like bagel bites), baby carrots, mini muffins, and tea size sandwiches can be fun.

Ingredients: celery stalks, peanut butter, raisins

Remove all the leaves from celery stalks and cut into strips about 3 inches long. Smear a spoonful of your choice of peanut butter, almond butter or soy butter into the trench of the celery stalk. Have your little one place the ants (raisins) along the peanut butter. Eat & enjoy!

2) Low Sugar Fruit Smoothie:

Ingredients: Plain yogurt, frozen berries, honey

Plain sugar free yogurt, frozen berries of your choice, a teaspoon of vanilla & some honey & blend! Its a fast, easy, healthy treat that you and your child can make together in a snap.

3) Toaster Oven Pizza Bagel:

Ingredients: bagels, spaghetti sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese

Lightly toast a bagel of your choice (plain, sesame, garlic or onion bagels work well for this recipe). Cover with a layer of your favorite spaghetti sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese. Put your assembled bagel back in the toaster oven at about 400 degrees for a few minutes, until the cheese is melted or golden brown. Remove and give the bagel time to COOL! You may want to cut it in half and make sure the spaghetti sauce is not steaming before serving.

4) Easy Cheesy Quesadilla:

Ingredients: tortillas and shredded cheese of your choice

Sprinkle cheese over tortilla and fold in half. Heat a slice of butter in a skillet pan and add folded tortilla when butter starts to sizzle. Let the quesadilla cook for 30 seconds and flip back and forth until tortilla is golden brown and cheese is melted. Delicious!

5) Peanut Butter Spiders:

Ingredients: Round crackers, peanut butter, straight pretzel sticks, raisins

Smear the cracker with peanut butter, use the sticky peanut butter to arrange 8 pretzel stick “legs”, use the raisins to represent eyes and…. there you have the yummiest spider ever!

1) Only give your child tasks you are willing to let them do at their own age-appropriate level. For example, if you ask them to mix a bowl of ingredients together, accept that they may leave chunks and don’t criticize. Tell them what they are doing right and then suggest how they might do it even better.

2) If the work you have to do is not good for outsourcing to a kiddo, you can improvise some invented tasks so that your child feeds helpful and involved, even if the task is not directly relevant to the meal prep. For example, give them shredded cheese and tell them it needs to be divided into two bowls. One of my favorites was taking a can of mixed nuts and asking my son to sort them by type. He loved it!

3) Typical activities you can let your child do: pouring, mixing ingredients, cracking eggs, rolling dough with a rolling pin. Since cracking eggs can be tricky, you can have them crack the eggs into a separate bowl and then remove any broken shell from the eggs before adding to the rest of your recipe.

Cooking is a Teaching Opportunity!

Its easy to demonstrate math concepts like addition, subtraction and counting in the kitchen. You can also teach them about how their food is grown and where it comes from. You can teach them about nutrition and a healthy diet.

Kitchen Safety

1) Use back burners (as opposed to front burners) to keep the heat out of your child’s reach.

2) Keep dangerous objects like your knives and cheese graters away from the edge of counters.

Helpful items to have:

1) Aprons – easy wash, full coverage aprons can save your child’s outfit if that is a concern. Of course, when my son helps me in the kitchen, its usually at dinner and right before bedtime, so its not really an issue.

2) Protective floor mats – Save yourself some effort, by placing a floor mat under your child’s work area.

3) Metal, as opposed to glass bowls, so if there is a spill, there is no breakage.

5) A step stool.

4) A relaxed attitude.

Involving your child in the kitchen provides you both with quality time and builds the child’s self esteem. It also helps your child understand the work involved in what would otherwise be food that was simply placed before them to eat. Be sure to have your kiddo help with clean up. Lastly, brag to others in front of them about their helpfulness in the kitchen.