1-2-3 Eat Lunch With Me

 

I wrote the title to this post over 13 months ago.
Which means that I did this activity with my oldest son over 13 months ago for the first time.
When I did it that first time I forgot to take pictures, which means I couldn't write this post.
And I didn't do it again with my son again until just a month or so ago - at which time I remembered to take pictures.

So if you see this activity and are thinking, "Wow, this mom does these cool things with her kids all the time. She's so fun with her kids and I'm the worst mom ever," just stop right now because I've done this twice with my kid in over a year. Hardly counts as 'all-of-the-time'.

If you didn't think that at all and you're now thinking that I'm nuts just carry on. I never think those things when I read mommy-blogs. Never. N-E-V-E-R.

Okay, anyway, to the actual post.

At the time I first did this my oldest - then almost 2 1/2 was just getting the hang of numbers. He could count to 20, but he didn't understand numbers in their context as well as he does now - over 3 1/2 years old. I thought it would be a fun way for him to understand what the numbers he knew meant, and encourage him to eat better. He still eats like...a toddler (hot dogs, cereal, plain fruit/veggies, candy) but maybe he ate better the two days I did this. Who knows?

What you'll Need

• The food you are going to feed your kid for lunch
• I like to aim for all the food groups. Cheez-Its are clearly a grain AND a dairy item...Yeah, no excuses. I feed my children crap.
• Toothpicks
• Pen
• Stickers
• I realize you can buy little flag stickers at all sorts of places, but I don't have them and wouldn't normally buy them. I had some rectangle stickers in 4 colors that I folded in half around the toothpick, cut, and wrote numbers on.
• Scissors (see Sticker commentary above).
• Something to put your kids' food on. Unless you put it directly on the table or a tray (hey no judging here! I get pelted with dishware almost every other meal...).

Then you get creative. How can you get 1 cheese stick to be a 3? Cut it up!

Poke your food and serve it up to the kiddos!

You can help them count all of their different options or let them eat the toothpicks until you realize they are actually going to eat the toothpicks and OH MY GOSH STOP EATING THAT YOU WILL HAVE SPLINTERS IN YOUR THROAT. No, that did not happen with my 21 month old. That last sentence was a lie.

This kid came in from grocery shopping with big alligator tears rolling down his face, but this lunch had him cheered up in a Jif (you see what I did there?).