Healthy Summer Treat for the Whole Family

Well Oregon and Washington are officially hitting hot summer days with  temperatures into the 90s and 100s. So we are breaking out our arsenal of sweet, easy, and cold summer treats. 

Of course one of the first things many people reach for in the summer heat are popsicles and ice cream which have their place at our house, but I prefer to try and find some healthy cold treatsas well. I do really like my Zoku popsicle maker for making quick healthy popsicles at home and my immersion blender to make frozen drinks like smoothies or frozen treats like all fruit sorbet. However one super easy and delicious summer treat is frozen grapes. 

I can not take the credit for thinking of this though. When I was working for a family over summer breaks from college the mother used to do this as a snack for her kids and it was so refreshing and wonderful that I have continued this summer treat in my own home. I have to reintroduce it every summer, especially to my son who is sceptical of most things, but after walking away from the first bite and saying it was horrible, he returned to say he wanted more and they were good. 

There is just something about them that feels extra refreshing when compared to other frozen snacks. I love them. All you do is rinse the grapes, pop the whole thing with the stem and everything, into the freezer and then eat them when they are frozen. For small kids I recommend cutting them in half after they have defrosted a bit, not too much though. They are hard and round so beware of choking hazards. Again cutting them in half helps a lot. 

Some of my other favorite healthy summer frozen snacks include smoothies and popsicles in my Zoku, there are some recipes in the tab above. 

Pattern Practice with Fruit

Okay who does not love fruit kabobs? I mean really what is not to love, fresh, healthy, pretty, tasty, I could go on and on. Recently we took the chance to make some fruit kabobs out of very simple ingredients and found that this is a wonderful way to work on patterns. 

Recognizing patterns and creating them is a very important skill to learn and it is something that preschools will usually be teaching children. You can make patterns just about anywhere with anything and it can provide a good source of entertainment too. What better way to work on pattern learning than using fruit (a healthy snack) and making a kabob. Not only will kids find this a fun and yummy activity but it will also help develop fine motor control and provide an educational experience. 

For these kabobs you could use any fruits that you have available and be as creative as you would like. We used grapes, apples cut into small chunks, and a pepino which has white and purple skin. We used popsicle sticks instead of skewers and they worked out just fine.  

Some ideas for this activity:

~ make a few skewers with some missing pieces of fruit and then have your child add the missing pieces in the correct order

~ allow the child to make their own pattern (that is what mine did)

~tell the child part of a pattern and have them create the rest on the popsicle stick

~draw out some pattern cards with colors of the fruit and have the children draw a card and create that card. 


What kind of pattern activities do you do with kids?