Tag Archives: school

May4

May the Fourth Be With You, friends, as you travel across today’s blog hop like the awesome Jedis I know you all are!

My contribution this year is dedicated to my little brother. I am sure that many girls of the 80′s can appreciate the memory of wanting to play with awesome Star Wars toys “for boys” and ransacking their brothers’ collections.

One particularly awesome toy that I remember being especially jealous of was the Kenner Jabba the Hutt playset from Return of the Jedi. Imagine my delight when I searched for images of this toy and discovered it on eBay, labeled as VINTAGE! Thanks for making me feel a little older, eBay sellers! Anyway, one of the best features of this toy was the trap door. You could could be Jabba and drop your enemy into the dungeon! Endless fun. Jabba actually completely scared me as a kid and I still get a little creeped out thinking of this ruthless slug-like disgusting mess of a creature. So naturally, I found it totally appropriate to commemorate him in my Kindergartener’s lunchbox.

My lunch Jabba is made with a whole wheat tortilla that I cut by hand to show his round body and long lumpy tail. There is a plain tortilla on the bottom that will be the lid to the quesadilla. The open-faced one on top has cheese melted onto it and then was spread with re-fried beans. I tried to use a knife to add a wrinkly pattern to Jabba’s skin, but the beans were lumpy enough to make him look quite disgusting as-is. I gave him candy eyes and a carrot mouth, and I tried to smear the beans around those features to make them look more inset, as he is very blob-like. I have a cheese stick next to him, instead of a hookah, and I used alphabet picks to spell out his name. The EasyLunchbox itself is being presented as vertical to represent the way that Jabba sits on the trap door. Fortunately for the child eating this lunch, this dungeon consists of carrots, celery, grape tomatoes and a mini-dipper of low-ranch, instead of a “pit of monstrous rancor.” I told my daughter that the mini-dipper contained Han Solo, frozen in Carbonite, even though he’d actually be on display in the throne room and not in the dungeon.

If you want to relive your Jabba play-time memories, or if your childhood somehow did not include this toy, here’s a great video review of it that I found on YouTube:

For my son’s lunch, I definitely took the easy route! He got a PB&J Tie Fighter with his first initial as an emblem. He has pirate booty, carrots, celery, strawberries, and a papaya animal Jedi that I constructed using bento picks.

Is Star Wars a big thing in your home? My kids haven’t really gotten into it yet, but they are certainly aware of it. I am excited to see if my son develops an interest in it when he gets a little older. How old were your kids when they got into it?

Now that you’ve seen our lunches today, please continue on the blog hop by clicking the button below for Food, Family, Fun:

Once you’ve completed the hop…

These are the products I used in this post:

May1

Working with Preschool Themes – Castles and the Sea!

Posted on May 1, 2013 by rachel.beard

Working with Preschool Themes – Castles and the Sea!

Most of my lunches are pretty basic and I come up with any special touches while I work on the lunch that morning (while I am under-caffeinated and over-hurried), but I love the opportunity to work with a school theme and try to make those lunches a little extra-special.

My son’s class has been working on a two-week unit on Medieval times and the teacher transformed the classroom into a castle! They’ve been learning about kings, queens, knights, dragons, and so much more. I had this castle cookie cutter from one of Girlie’s collections and decided to try it out for his sandwich. I added some of the other small cutters I had for flags on top of the turrets, windows, and a fancy door. I gave him a teddy bear knight with a sword pick and cherry tomato. He has a little bit of pirate booty, half an apple, and some Greek yogurt. He was giddy when I showed him this lunch. I love to see his face light up when I make something special for him.

While I was at it, I made a duplicate castle for Girlie. She also had pirate booty, papaya, edamame, grape tomatoes, pistachios, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube. She was very excited about this lunch too!

Girlie’s Kindergarten class is studying the sea, in preparation for an upcoming field trip to the Adventure Aquarium. I decided to make her a cheese and crackers bento with boats, whales, fish, and waves. She also has snow peas, grape tomatoes, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, pistachios, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube. I’ve got most of the rainbow into this box and she ate all of it!

I made a similar lunchbox for Little Dude and he actually came over to help me with the cheese cut-outs. He loves using the cookie cutters and popping out pieces with our Cute-Z-Cute detailing tool. He was supposed to be getting dressed for school while I was working on this, but he insisted “Eagles can help!” It took me a second to put together that he was referring to the fact that he was wearing his Philadelphia Eagles pajamas and wanted to help me while he wore those, instead of waiting until he was dressed. I’m a sucker and I agreed! I love when he gets involved.

Girlie got one more sea themed lunch – dolphins and a heart made out of sunbutter and jam. She also had half an apple, carrot sticks, and a container of yogurt (not pictured). She is always overjoyed when I use candy eyes on a sandwich and these dolphins are just too cute.

I have to remember to look at school themes in advance – they are so fun to plan for! I’d love to hear your suggestions on how you reinforce school themes, and learning in general, at home. As the kids get older and more academically oriented, I am definitely interested in coming up with more fun learning activities that extend what they are taught in the classroom. Please comment with any ideas! Thank you!

Here are the items I used in this post:

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Apr24

Week of the Young Child – Success!

Posted on April 24, 2013 by rachel.beard

Week of the Young Child – Success!

My kids both attend a NAEYC accredited school that participates in Week of the Young Child. This was celebrated last week with lots of special activities and fun treats and visits from the kids’ families.

During Week of the Young Child, parents and other family members are encouraged to visit the classroom and lead the children in a special activity. In Girlie’s kindergarten classroom, they had a parent teach about gardening and help the kids decorate a pot and plant a sunflower seed, another parent did a cupcake decorating activity, a grandparent talked Philadelphia history with the kids, and another parent read a story to the class. The activity is supposed to take 15 minutes and it can be on whatever topic the person chooses. Naturally, I wanted to talk about lunch.

I decided to introduce the kids to bento and teach them how to make a healthy lunch for themselves. As part of the activity, I also supplied lunch, an EasyLunchbox, a mini dipper, and fun picks for 16 people (including teachers). The kids were all so excited to get their own lunchbox and picks and get creative about lunch. It was a lot of fun to see them get to work. I brought ALL of my sandwich cutters and cookie cutters, but it was the Sand*Wishes Lunch Punches and Star Wars Tie Fighter cutter that attracted the most attention. You can see some of their handiwork below:

As for the food, I offered up supplies for making a lunchable-style cheese/cracker/cold-cut box, using cookie cutters to make fun cheese shapes, OR a sandwich, using the cutters. Sandwiches were the most popular choice by far. I provided whole wheat bread and crackers, cheddar cheese slices, turkey and ham cold-cuts, babybel cheese circles, strawberries, grapes, apple slices, cucumber, celery, carrots, and low-fat ranch for dipping. The kids were allowed to top off the box with pirate booty, if they wanted to, but were encouraged to fill up on fruits and veggies first.

I wasn’t sure how much to bring with me and erred on the side of over-doing it. Even with almost double what I had estimated would be consumed, I had very little left over! Cucumbers and strawberries were the first to go, but the kids really did take almost everything. I did not hear one child complain about whole wheat bread or that there was no “dessert.” They were all very excited by the bento itself and the picks and were not really focused on what was or wasn’t served. Many kids helped themselves to seconds and came up with new ideas when they came back to the sandwich station. It definitely showed how they could be excited by healthy foods in the right circumstances. I was very proud of all of them.

A few parents have asked for more info on how to pack lunch like this for their own kids and I am considering putting on a parent workshop, just for fun. I love how bento can be so contagious! A lot of time and a good hundred bucks went into coordinating this special lunch for the kids, but I definitely feel like it was a success and totally worth it. I would like to do it again for my son’s class next year. Do they have events like this in grade school? Elementary school starts for us next year and it is still a mystery to me!

Here are some of the products I used in this post:

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Apr16

Mixing Up the Bento Boxes

Posted on April 16, 2013 by rachel.beard

Mixing Up the Bento Boxes

Ouch! Life has been extra busy and I haven’t made time to post our lunches. I now have a nice backlog of lunch photos to post and am going to attempt to group them into small themes. Today’s is simply, variety!

This Kotobuki Frog box has a cheddar cheese and vegetarian bacon stuffed crescent roll, sugar snap peas, grape tomatoes, cantaloupe, grapes, and strawberries. I also sent in a pomegranate yogurt with granola that Girlie picked. Both kids LOVED the yogurt and rest of the lunch too.

The lunch above is the Kotobuki panda. I love this lunchbox for its ridiculous cute factor, but it is a little bit small, and it always annoyed me that it came with a plain black bento strap. Since it sits at headband position, I always felt like it should be red. Well, my daughter and I got hooked on Rainbow Loom recently. She’s been making bracelets, and I’m cranking out bento straps!! I’ve made some for the EasyLunchboxes too and I’ll show those off in another post! It looks so great on our panda and keeps the box held together snug. This lunch has a CuteZCute panda, some Trader Joes rocket crackers, plum slices, and strawberry. He had a yogurt on the side.

The above lunches are both from Girlie’s Hello Kitty Collection (lids pictured here) and both contain the vegetable soup she helped me make. We took a visit to the farm store and she selected lots of fresh veggies that she thought we go well in her recipe. We used my homemade veggie stock and added her choices of carrots, celery, leeks, zucchini, broccoli, green bell peppers, red bell peppers, and green beans. We made a huge pot of soup and ate it for days! She loved it and definitely felt proud that she participated in both the shopping, preparation, and cooking. She was a great help!

The lunch on the left has star and flower cheese sandwiches with rocket crackers, oranges, banana, cucumber slices, soup, and milk. The lunch on the right has cheesy tortilla pinwheels, pirate booty, cactus pear, oranges, grapes, and soup.

This bento is from our PaperChase set (picture of lids here). Girlie has 2 of my bento scrap french toast muffins (made with cranberries this time), carrots, celery, a small container of lite ranch to dip with, and a power smoothie made with berries, banana, oranges, Greek yogurt, and kale. Delicious and healthy!

This Goodbyn Bynto has strawberries and cantaloupe, crackers with star and flower cheese slices, trail mix, and pirate booty. I’ve been asked before how I deal with bento scraps. There generally are not a lot of bento scraps, but whatever is not used in the lunch gets re-purposed in some way. Cheese scraps can go into a small container and will be used like shredded cheese in other lunches or in quesadillas. Sometimes they get melted on top of broccoli. They often get fed to the dog, who is generally sitting at my feet, begging for scraps. Veggie scraps go into my freezer bag of soup stock scraps if they are usable and into the compost, if not. Fruit scraps can go into freezer for smoothies, pancakes, or bento scrap muffins, and anything unusable goes into compost. There is very little actual waste. You can see below how I store the cheese scraps as I’m cutting it. In my next post, you will see these same scraps get used like shredded cheese!

What do you do with your scraps? I love all the innovative ways I see my bento blogger friends re-purposing scraps! I just added a new pin board to keep track of all of their recipes and ideas. You can click right here to follow it.

These are the products I used in my post:

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Apr4

3 EasyLunchboxes Inspired by a Preschooler!

Posted on April 4, 2013 by rachel.beard

3 EasyLunchboxes Inspired by a Preschooler!

My son has graduated from being a very enthusiastic lunch consumer to a bento-design apprentice in my kitchen! Here are 3 simple lunches that he chose all the elements for and helped prep. He basically did everything that did not require a sharp knife.

This lunch has a CuteZCute cat PB&J sandwich, cheese, pirate booty, grapes, and strawberries. Little Dude, who turns 4 in June, washed the grapes and strawberries, cut the bread, used the special tool to pop-out the accents in the bread, and picked the cup the cheese went in. He almost always picks the CuteZCute pig, so I was pleased to see him change things up a little!

This EasyLunchbox has crackers and space-themed cheese slices. He also has pirate booty (his fave), grapes, strawberries, and cucumber and tomato. I talked him into giving the veggies a try, but naturally, he did not touch them. Oh well, I continue to make attempts at this! He cut the shapes out of his cheese, washed the fruit, and poured in the pirate booty. It is fun working side-by-side, even though it does tend to slow things down a bit!

This lunch has a cutter that I bought at Daiso in San Francisco and never managed to use. He fished it out of the drawer and demanded that we give it a try. He has a two-car train and a boat, surrounded by pirate booty. He has PB & honey today. He also has applesauce, grapes, and something new… a cactus pear! We found this special fruit at the local farm store and decided to give it a try. I can’t even begin to describe it. You’ll have to try it for yourself. It had some seeds inside and the color was gorgeous! I can’t wait to hear how the kids like it in their lunches today!

Little Dude was very excited about this cool “new” fruit! Have you tried it? What other unusual fruits could we be missing? His diet is somewhat restricted to fruit, cheese, and various breads, crackers, and tortillas. I am always looking for something new I can slip in and hope for success. Please comment if you have any suggestions!

These are the products I used in this post:

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Mar28

Hoppy Easter Everybunny!

Posted on March 28, 2013 by rachel.beard

Hoppy Easter Everybunny!

Oh boy that’s a terrible title! Too bad for you, I kept it anyway!

This bunny lunch marks the last day of school before school’s Friday – Monday long weekend for Spring Break! I packed both kids bunny-shaped cheese sandwiches on a bed of lettuce. It is hard to see in the picture, but the middle egg is a dyed hard-boiled egg that Girlie made at school. She brought home one for each of us! The two smaller eggs on the left and right are mini Easter eggs and contain Annie’s Organic Bunny Grahams as a special treat. The kids also have grapes and strawberries in the fruit compartment and cooked carrots with a bunny pick in the smallest compartment. Girlie was most impressed that the bunnies have some of their favorite foods to eat (lettuce and carrots), but Little Dude’s favorite feature was the mini eggs. He said “you put eggs in my lunchbox?” and when I nodded with a big smile, he literally fell over laughing!! Gotta love how easy it is to make a 3 year old’s day!

How long do you think it takes to make an egg-stra special lunch like this one?

I was surprised that it did not take me much longer than it does to make a boring lunch! I used a cute bunny cutter to cut shapes into sliced bread and sliced cheese. I washed some fruit and cut up a few strawberries. I had lettuce leftover from an earlier salad, so I just dropped it into the EasyLunchbox and added the sandwiches, hard boiled eggs (which were already cooked and dyed), filled a couple of mini eggs, and grabbed the leftover cooked carrots from the fridge. Easy. The most challenging (and time consuming) part was digging through my bento drawer to find the tiny bunny pick that I wanted to use. Even with that hiccup, making TWO identical Easter lunches took 13 and a half minutes. Getting all of it into their lunch bags, along with their drink containers, cloth napkins, utensils, and ice packs, took 16 minutes and 23 seconds.

I have no idea how much time “normal” people spend making lunches, but if you could’ve seen my sons face when he saw this lunchbox, you’d know that the 16 minutes are so worth it for us! It benefits both kids. Girlie likes to take creative lead on designing lunchbox ideas. She has so many great ideas and is always thrilled when I respect her ideas and try them out. Dude is just entertained! He likes to help, but mostly he just gets a big smile and knows he has something to look forward to at lunchtime. I love when he carries in his lunch bag and practically skips to the car. It sure beats the days when he throws a fit over not wanting to go!

How much time do you spend on lunches every day and how many do you make?

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Mar14

Happy Pi Day!

Posted on March 14, 2013 by rachel.beard

Happy Pi Day!

Happy Pi Day, nerds of the world! My family is much more enthusiastic over the lesser known and far geekier holidays like Pi Day, May the Fourth, and Talk Like a Pirate Day, than we are about the commercialized ones! In fact, the kids went all out to show their engineer dad some Pi Day appreciation with a special breakfast this morning, all to say thank you for all the brainy work he does for us!

The EasyLunchbox above has a Pi-shaped breadstick we made from homemade dough last night! It also has a delicious slice of apple pie and some cheddar cheese cubes. To enhance the math lesson, there are 22 pieces of fruit and 7 pieces of cucumber. 22 divided by 7 = pi! For the record, my husband is an engineer and I work in computers, and we’ve never been called on for this bit of scientific knowledge. But we will impart it to our children anyway!

The Goodbyn Bynto above has apple pie, which Little Dude was super excited about, tortilla cheese pinwheels, strawberries, and grapes. As a budding engineer himself, he has a lot of enthusiasm for pi day and was practically skipping into the classroom to put this lunch in his cubby!

Above is the surprise Pi Day breakfast we made for my husband, and at Girlie’s insistence, we even served it to him in bed! He has a warm slice of apple pie and two fried eggs with cheese. Breakfast of engineering champions, right?? To all the engineers and mathematicians of the world, we salute you!

And one more word of husband-appreciation… I went out on Tuesday night, and when I came home, mine had surprised me by packing lunches for the kids. He did his best to make them bento-like. He made a new creation: “Hambugers & Jelly,” which thankfully turned out to be PB&J on a bun… no hamburger patty included! He was sure to put some cute cheese and fresh fruit in there too. And he even took a photograph! I was impressed and the kids ate every single bite! Thanks, Nate!

One last plea for anyone with a Facebook account to hook me up with some votes! I am a finalist for a “complete and total cosmetic/wellness/weight loss transformation.” The race is close and if you could help me by liking this status and this page, it will be a big help! The voting ends tomorrow, so please do it now! Thank you!

Here are the products I used in this post:

Mar12

Lotsa’ Leftovers!

Posted on March 12, 2013 by rachel.beard

Lotsa’ Leftovers!

I have not posted any great themed lunchboxes lately, but I do have a mixed up post of leftover bento lunches to show off today. None are creative, but they’re nutritious, filling, and got us out the door quick when we overslept (thank you daylight savings!).

I’ll start with my husband, who had some grilled chicken left over from a playdate/BBQ we hosted on Sunday. He has two pieces of chicken, surrounded by celery, sweet baby peppers, pineapple chunks, and two wedges of laughing cow lite. This is a nice lunch that has some color and low-fat protein to help him stay full and hopefully avoid the snack truck at work!

Girlie has leftover LoMein from the Chinese takeout we had over the weekend. We very rarely do take out, but we were working in our garden, and by 5:30, we realized we were too tired and too late to start cooking someting and too filthy to go out. I dialed up some Chinese food and we kept working in the garden right up until the delivery guy pulled into our driveway. The kids loved the Lo Mein and I sent the leftovers with Girlie in her Tinkerbell thermos along with a Kotobuki box full of ants on a log, sweet baby pepper, honey crisp apple, and grapes. YUM.

Little Dude has some leftover pasta in a thermos, grapes and pineapple, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube. I heated up the pasta and then just dumped the frozen peas right in the thermos and stirred it together. The peas defrost this way, without getting wrinkly and overcooked. I added some fresh Parmesan cheese on top.

My husband had another round of grilled chicken leftovers, this time with a slightly Irish twist. He has the orange peppers, white chicken, and green celery to represent the colors of the flag of Ireland. He also has some of the leftover shamrock ravioli from Costco and pineapple chunks.

Girlie also has the shamrock ravioli, along with crackers and cheese, apple slices, and edamame. I included a valentine heart (yes, I am STILL doling out candy, even after I purged a bunch of the really bad stuff) and a poem for her to go with this week’s -IGHT word family. She loves this new tradition and I found this notepaper that is perfect for writing short poems on. Today’s poem is: “You are a star, your light so bright. You keep away the fright at night. Snuggle up to me. Hold me tight. When I’m with you, I feel all right.” She is probably reading it right now at kindergarten lunchtime. Awww. Her reading is improving quickly and she loves reading everything she sees now. It is so fun to be able to bond over books together!

Here are the products used in this post:

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Mar8

And the Sand*Wishes Lunch Punch Winner is (drumroll please!):

Posted on March 8, 2013 by rachel.beard

And the Sand*Wishes Lunch Punch Winner is (drumroll please!):

Yes. I’m a geek. Some days I just cannot help that!

The winner is Amy A. from Kentucky! I’ll get her Sand*Wishes set in the mail ASAP, so she can begin making Lunch Punch creations of her own. Congrats to Amy and thank you to everyone who entered!

The above lunch is a Sand*Wishes cheese sandwich with flower cut-out. I gave Girlie trail mix as a filler and included some baby peppers on the side. Those peppers are her new favorite veggie! The small compartments have pineapple, strawberries, and blueberries. I included some cute animal picks just to make her smile. She’s learning the “-ice” word family this week and I’ve been slipping little -ice word poems into her lunchbox for her to read to her friends. I started out with

“I kissed you once,

I kissed you twice.

Girlie, I think,

you are very nice.“

and progressed to more complex ones as the week went on. She seemed to like this, and I am going to try to continue as they add new word families. I love how the simple things make all the difference.

Now, that I’ve announced the winner of my contest, I have to plug a contest that I am involved in. I was nominated me for a “complete and total cosmetic/wellness/weight loss transformation” from Refresh Wellness, Weight Loss and Cosmetics at the NAC! Please “like” this status:
AND also like their page for your vote to count. I’d really like to win this. I strive to eat better and achieve my fitness goals, but it is always a struggle for me. I am hoping that with Dr. Lori Gerber’s help, I can get back on track with my weight and also try some of the other cosmetic services she offers. Thank you for your help with this! It means a lot to me to see all this support.

Here are the products I used in this post:

Mar6

4 CuteZCute Bento Lunches!

Posted on March 6, 2013 by rachel.beard

4 CuteZCute Bento Lunches!

Have you tried the CuteZCute sandwich cutter yet? It has been out of stock on Amazon.com, but it is now back! To help celebrate its triumphant return (they are made by a mom-friend of mine), I have been making CuteZCute lunches all week! I made one of each animal. Check them out:

This one is an all-time CuteZCute favorite. I used the frog template and then cut bones out of white cheddar to make a froggy pirate flag. I added blueberries and cheese for the border. He has strawberries and some leftover cookie from the huge batch I baked over the weekend. I wish I had captured Little Dude’s face when he saw this thing! His face lit up and he was jumping up and down. And then, of course, it was some kid’s pizza-lunch birthday at school and he didn’t get to eat it there. Fortunately, he hated what I made for dinner that night (some quinoa casserole) and he got to eat his lunch then instead!

For this CuteZCute pig I packed for Girlie, I dyed some of the cutouts with beet juice that I had left after roasting beets for dinner. I dipped them in the beety goodness and then left them out to dry overnight. They were probably too dry to eat, but they sure looked cute! He also had cheddar and jack cheese cubes, sugar snap peas, strawberries skewered with heart picks, blueberries, tomatoes, and cucumber.

Little Dude’s new favorite trend is asking for two sandwiches every day. He wants a peanut butter sandwich and a cheese sandwich. Today, he has a CuteZCute cat PB&J sandwich and a tiny flower cheese sandwich that was cut out from Girlie’s sandwich (which will be featured in my Lunch Punch winner announcement, coming soon). He has a mini-dipper of trail mix, strawberries, and pineapple. I added some cute picks just for fun. Little Dude helped me pick the pineapple at the grocery this weekend. As we were going through the store, he held it and kept talking about “Spongebob’s home.” I let him help me chop up the pineapple chunks this morning and I tried to reinforce knife safety: “When is it OK to use a knife, Little Dude?” And instead of answering something about having a parent to help you to be safe, he answered “when you’re cutting up Spongebob’s home!” Gotta love preschool logic!

This last lunch is a CuteZCute panda in a Panda Kotobuki bento box. He has the Panda, cheese slices, a strawberry and blueberry flower, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube. Cute, fun, and easy to make!

Do you have a CuteZCute cutter yet? They are only $9.99 for the set of all four animals I showed above. They are very cute and easy to make. They will produce a lot of leftover bread, but you can use that for bento scrap muffins, egg in a hole, breadcrumbs, and endless other recipes that don’t end up wasting too much food. For more CuteZCute lunch ideas, check out this pinterest board!

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Rachel's Random Ramblings

Bentos and My Adventures in Parenting!

Tag Archives: school

May the Fourth Be With You! – Jabba the Hutt EasyLunchbox

Working with Preschool Themes – Castles and the Sea!

Week of the Young Child – Success!

Mixing Up the Bento Boxes

3 EasyLunchboxes Inspired by a Preschooler!

Hoppy Easter Everybunny!

Happy Pi Day!

Lotsa’ Leftovers!

And the Sand*Wishes Lunch Punch Winner is (drumroll please!):

4 CuteZCute Bento Lunches!