Welcome to summer! First of all, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Those of us who home school…and therefore have kids around all day every day…snicker a bit when public school parents spaz in the summer. Before you get offended, know that you get to snicker at us in the fall as your kids go back to school and we spaz a bit, wondering if we’re completely crazy to keep these lough, messy, hard-to-teach little people home all day. Parenting just isn’t easy, no matter how you do it!
Anyway, we’re all home with hot, hungry little people and we don’t want to double the grocery budget. Here are a few possibilities to keep them full and happy without breaking the bank:
- Make a routine: This can decrease the craziness of meals by orders of magnitude because we get to make choices once and reap the benefits for months. Make a quick list of healthy breakfasts and lunches and post it on your fridge. You can assign meals to certain days (Monday: eggs, fruit; Tuesday: yogurt, fruit; etc) or just post the options you’ll use each week…whichever option makes you happy. If your kids are old enough to get their own food then plan meals they can easily put together to free up your time. When it’s time to make a grocery list you check your meal list and reorder what you’ll need that week.
- Snacks: Stick to produce, a healthy fat and some protein. Simply put, it fills them up so they aren’t back 15 minutes later asking for more. Those giant packs of freezer pops are cheap and taste good, but they’re never going to fill anyone up because they’re just sugar and water. Some great options are fruit and nuts, veggies and humus, olives and fruit, cheese and meat roll-ups, home made popcorn and apples, or home made popsicles (recipe at the bottom of the post).
- Let them eat outside: Remember that ‘eat slowly’ thing I keep mentioning? Turns out it works on kids too. 🙂 When they eat outside they’re frequently wiggling around, jumping up to get on a swing or chase someone and they end up eating slower. And they eat less.
- Let them drink water: They’ll ask for soda, KoolAid, Gatoraid and drink mixes, but this is where we get to be firm and just point to the kitchen sink. Better yet, don’t buy the other options so we can honestly say all we have is water. Just like adults, kids mix up thirst and hunger signals. We can hydrate them first, give it 10 minutes and see if they’re still hungry.
Popsicle ‘recipe:’ This is super flexible so use what you have on hand. We typically use 2-3 bananas, 1 cup of fruit (frozen berries are great), a squirt of honey and enough whole milk to mix it all up in our Ninja blender. That’s it! If you want to sneak in a handful of baby carrots they won’t even know it…a handful of spinach doesn’t change the flavor, but it does change the color a bit. Our kids like it as a smoothie too.
