Growing up, my mother was very conscientious about what she fed me. Snacks in my house were fruit leather, delicious whole-wheat muffins with applesauce and cheerios, and we had water with every meal. My house was the house no one wanted to do school projects at because we didn’t have “good” snacks.
While I, unsurprisingly, went through a hearty junk food phase where my diet consisted primarily of ramen noodles and Twizzlers, as I have matured, I have gained appreciation for the food values my mother taught me.
However, as a mother of little boys who get ridiculously excited over snacks like cheese curls (I admit to being very affected by one of my son’s excited exclamation of “Mommy! Aharon had the same snack!”), I am not strictly a “healthy snacks” person.
But you know, I try to toe the line between snacks that they get excited about and snacks that are actually good for them. This morning, to my great pleasure and surprise, I got my kids to agree to bring something healthy in addition to their “standard” snack! Two kids brought red pepper slices and one brought a green apple.
Will they actually eat the healthy snacks? I’ll find out later today. But at this exact moment I feel great, so I’m just gonna let myself feel like a parenting success for the moment because I will inevitably feel like a parenting failure sometime in the near future.
But back to the snacks! As with most things, I get into a rut when brainstorming what kind of snacks to get my kids. While routine is nice and comforting and all that, I feel like having more options to pick from is a good thing. So I thought I would turn to you, my wonderful readers, and get some new suggestions. May we all benefit from our joint efforts!
One of my children’s teachers sent home this fabulous list, which I think deserves to be shared:
The snacks that are in the main rotation for us at the moment are:
- Pretzels
- Cheerios
- Chex mix
- Pringles
- Popcorn
- Pita Chips
- String Cheese
What would you add? What do your kids like? Happy back to school everyone!
Rivki Silver ~ thoughts & music 
Coconut chips. Banana chips. Dried figs or dates. Pizza leftovers. Concerning snack bars: there are great recipes for homemade bars, so you can be sure they have healthy ingredients. (If you should ever be bored because you don’t have anything to do. It’s something I always meant to do, but, you know how it is…)