toddler approved, tasty tuesday

i thought that i would use todays ''tasty tuesday'' to talk about toddler approved snacks that don't include m&m's or cookies :)

 

my boys are almost 4, 2.5 and 15 months old, please use common sense & only give these snacks to kiddos who are old enough. 

generally speaking my kids love to eat almost anything. their all time favorite (at least for pooks) are fruit snacks.

now while they are kinda sugary, i'm okay with them for several reasons. first, they are a light snack and won't ruin dinner. they are about 10 pieces in each pack and one package contains 100% of their daily value for vitamin C, they are 80 calories and fat free. they are made with real fruit juice, so overall i can't complain too much. plus they are super easy: just tear open the package and go. we keep quite a few in the diaper bag!

coming in a close second is: any type of fruit with a dip. usually strawberries, apples or blueberries. now while they love caramel dip, it is high is sugar so i limit it. usually we use all natural vanilla yogurt.

it's just a little bit sweet and the active cultures help keep 'em healthy. bubba just uses his just as dip, while peanut and pooks dip and then eat theirs.

now there are quite a few snacks that are appealing, not necessarily because of the nutrition but because of the educational value. yep, snacks can be fun! take for example both of these: cheez-it snacks and nabisco alpha-bits:

 

sure my kids are too old to play scrabble, even the junior version, but they love looking and talking about all of the letters! now i'll be honest, peanut could care less, but bubba and pooks are really recognizing their capital letters (bubba knows all of them!). these aren't really nutritious but they aren't horrible either are yummy and fun.

other popular snacks are:

• smoothies--made with yogurt, frozen strawberries, bananas and a little bit of honey.
• trail mix-- made with peanuts, raisins (or crasins), peanut butter chips, cheerios, pretzels and chocolate chips
• pretzels--plain or dipped in peanut butter
• crackers topped with cheese

i hope this post gave you at least a couple suggestions to help out with your toddler. please share any ideas or common snacks that your kids enjoy in the comments section of this post. i'll then add them to this original post for us to look back to later!