Does prepping after school snack take a little bit of planning and/or effort? Yes. But here’s why it’s worth it.
Fact: The kids come home from school HUNGRY.
Fact: Dinner’s not ready. (Or, your family eats together a bit later)
Fact: If snack isn’t ready, the kids are raiding the pantry and eating whatever they find first.
At least, that’s how it goes in our house. So every day, the hungry kids were grabbing whatever they saw first. Usually, it was the chips-cookies-candy that they saw and reached for first. They ate their fill, but it didn’t leave them, on the whole, feeling satisfied. The artificial ‘full’ feeling they felt crashed soon after, leaving them irritable, hungry for dinner (it wasn’t ready), and grumpy.
So something had to change.
In general, I follow the Division of Responsibility (DOR) model of feeding my children. Crash course: Mom provides the ‘what’ we’re eating, ‘where’ we’re going to eat, and ‘when’ it’s time to eat. Child decides ‘whether’ or not to eat, and ‘how much.’ For more about the DOR model, read this post.
So it was a pretty natural transition for me to ‘DOR’-ize snack time too. Here’s how it works. At some point before the kids get home, I prep snack. If you arrive home after them or with them, you can do it the night before and leave it in the fridge, but I usually do it a few minutes before they walk in.
Snack is a fruit or vegetable + a protein + a starch.
That’s it! That’s the whole formula! I try to have a variety of all three stocked in the house because variety is first of all, exciting, and it also helps expose kids to more kinds of foods. I make a platter in the middle of the table, put out small plates, and everyone helps themselves. Do some kids only grab the starch? Sure. Do some kids still kvetch that they want x-y-z? Yup. That’s okay.
Once I started having snack ready, I noticed something else too. When the kids were coming in, instead of splintering off to do their own thing (mostly fight, let’s be real), we started the afternoon sitting at the table together. I bring my coffee and it’s an amazing family bonding activity.
Want to try it? While you can use anything in your fridge/pantry, here are some of our favorites.
Proteins: Nuts, hard-boiled eggs, cheese (shredded in a cup, sliced), nut butters, squeezy-yogurts, bottled yogurt smoothies
Fruits/Vegetables: If you take the time to cut up your produce, it goes soooo much faster. Instead of just putting out an apple or peach, I’ll cut it into slices. Grapes get broken into mini bunches, oranges get peeled and halved, cucumbers get sliced into fries, and peppers go into rings. Kids will naturally start enjoying a wider variety of fruits and veggies when it’s sitting there, readily available and easy to grab.
Starches: Everyone’s favorite! Cookies, oatmeal squares, graham crackers, tortilla chips, corn chips, crackers. (You’ll be surprised though…this might draw them to the platter, but once they’re there, they’ll eventually be more receptive to the proteins and veggies too.)
Use your own platter, use a regular plastic plate, or level up with these options, below. Enjoy!
my mom would always have cut up veggies ready when we came home from school and it was the only time we ate veggies. if she would ever suggest to take a pepper when we were staaaaaaaaaarving we’re not interested.
I find the same thing with toys, instead of telling kids to go take something from the playroom I just put down a container of magnatiles in the living room where I am and without even noticing they get drawn to it
gona try that with toys, brilliant!
Love this! You can add dip ins aka hummus, guacamole or salsa which takes the fun level up a notch. Ever since doing this my kids are calmer for hw time and dinner time.
Great post! I’m super inspired to implement this! Here’s to hoping that the kids don’t complain anymore about being hungry before dinner is ready. And thank you sheva, I’ll try this with toys too!
I adore this! You may enhance the fun factor by adding dip ins, such as salsa, guacamole, or hummus.
Love this!! My kids love Homemade muffins too!!
You can make a oatmeal/spelt muffin with nut butters avocado oil ,chocolate chips your kids will be thrilled! They tend to come home staaaaaarving!!! And it’s a great way to get in some nutrition for you picky eaters
Any suggestions what I could do with my children coming home at staggered times?
Also, I usually do supper first because I was finding that kids were snacking and by the time we got to supper their appetities were done. Do you think I could reverse and do this for after dinner snack time? It might be too challenging with no longer being able to use milchig protein if after a fleishig supper..?