Rainbow Veggie Snack
How’s your luck with getting your kids to eat vegetables?
Our feeding therapists love this colorful Rainbow Snack because it gets kids interacting with veggies in a novel way. You can make these veggie topped crackers at home too. Talk about the colors, the textures and most importantly, have fun making these bite sized rainbows and lucky horseshoes! This snack will add a pop of color to your St. Patrick’s Day nibbles Who knew eating vegetables could be so fun?!
Here’s what you’ll need
- Crackers
- Cream cheese or your favorite cracker spread
- A variety of vegetables: mini bell peppers, celery, purple sweet potato. chives, cilantro
- Other suggestions include small cucumbers, baby rainbow carrots, radishes etc
- Tools: Dull knife or spreader, kid sized scissors
Make it
STEP 1: Cut the peppers width wise.
STEP 2: Spread the cream cheese on top of the cracker.
STEP 3. Cut the pepper rings in half and trim.. Arrange your veggies in a rainbow shape.
STEP 4. Place veggies upright or laying flat on the cracker.
STEP 5. Sprinkle herbs. Add cream cheese clouds to the sides of the rainbow.
Pro Tips
- Kids can practice using scissors to snip and trim their veggies.
- Use “pincher” fingers to sprinkle herbs on top.
- For the creamy clouds: Use a sandwich bag and fill with a few tablespoons of cream cheese. Push the cream cheese into the corner, twist and secure with a clip. Snip the corner and pipe creamy clouds onto your cracker.
What does your rainbow
taste like?
Skills Addressed
Fine Motor
- 2 hand use: This craft requires bilateral hand coordination, such as holding scissors to cut with one hand while stabilizing the herb (e.g. chive) with the other hand.
- Grasp strength: Squeezing the bag of cream cheese is good for strengthening the hands and practicing how to grade the amount of force used. Squeeze the cream cheese bag too hard and too much comes out, too little and your clouds will look deflated.
- Grasp strength: Squeezing the bag of cream cheese is good for strengthening the hands and practicing how to grade the amount of force used. Squeeze the cream cheese bag too hard and too much comes out, too little and your clouds will look deflated.
To increase the challenge
- Have the child mix their own cracker spread by adding herbs or cheese sprinkles into the cream cheese.
- Make multiple cookies for repetition and skills practice
Other modifications
- Consider subbing ingredients to make it dairy and gluten free.
- Make your own homemade cracker spread.
- Use a rocker knife or adapted scissors to cut up the veggies. Pre-slice the veggies in advance.
- Use this as feeding therapy game, experimenting with different textures to improve sensory processing, particularly tactile tolerance for wet textures vs dry textures, soft vs crunchy.
Ready for dessert? Check out our leprechaun sized Pot O’Gold Cookie Craft.
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