Preschool Halloween party - healthy food ideas

[rahans]

DD's preschool is having a Halloween party this week and parents were told they could contribute if they would like. Do you have any fun and healthy ideas for a snack (no nuts or nut butter)? I was thinking of bringing fruit - how can I make a fruit tray fun/Halloweenish? Or any other ideas that avoid a lot of sugar and work!

[IlluminatedAttic]

Lots and lots of ideas at Family Fun. We have done several over the past couple of years and have enjoyed them.

[octobermom]

Every time my DD has had a school party (mostly in her preschool years at this point) I've brought the same thing a try a sliced apples and bannanas cut into 3's (left in the skins) and that is it. They always go ann fast I never bring home a single left over its ussually the only thing that totally goes.

Deanna

[Evan&Anna's_Mom]

I'm not sure if this qualifies as too much work... But I did pumpkin-shaped cheese sandwiches. For each one, use a pumpkin shaped cookie cutter and cut out bread piece and one orange chedder cheese piece. Butter the bread lightly (so the cheese will stick) and then top bread with cheese. If you want to get really cute, use bits of olive to make eyes and a mouth for each one, using butter as "glue".

Other ideas, depending on your definition of healthy:

Apple slices with carmel dip
Pumpkin muffins (use recipe for pumpkin bread, bake in muffin pans)
Pumpkin cookies
Apple cake or muffins

[emmaegbert]

baked apples. gingerbread (can make it fairly low sugar). pumpkin stew. warm cider (heat it up with a cinammon stick and a few cloves... some kids won't like the strong flavors but other might love it). Flatbread (focaccia) with a little cinannamon sugar sprinkled on top.

[mojumi]

Originally Posted by rahans

I was thinking of bringing fruit - how can I make a fruit tray fun/Halloweenish?

I'm working on this same question! Some ideas

-jack-o-lantern oranges. Cut and scoop inside of an orange just like you would a pumpkin; cut out a face (or draw on with a sharpie), and fill it up with fruit salad

-fruit face. place orange segments and purple grapes on skewers and line up to form a jack-o-lantern face (like a fruit flag but a pumpkin -- http://nutrition.preschoolrock.com/i...esh-fruit-flag)

-cut out bat shapes in tortillas with a cookie cutter; bake for 10 mns; cool and serve with pumpkin butter or apple butter dip.

If you find other halloween fruit snack ideas, please share!!

[beanma]

I got a great and easy idea of teh internetz a year or two ago. You can make cheese bugs. It's easiest to take cheese sticks (moz, or colby, or twisty) and cut them in 4ths. You could do it with a block of cheese, too, but you need to end up with a morsel that is about 1-2 inches long and .5-1 inch wide. Then you get a bag of chow mein noodles (Pretzels are too big and the funky shapes of the chow mein noodles make this work great. It's totally worth buying these special for this.) All you do next is stick 6 chow mein noodle legs in each morsel of cheese and stick two on one end for antennae on the head. It's really easy and really really cute. I'll try to find a link. Be back if I find it...

http://www.familycorner.com/family/k...crawlies.shtml

[lightheart]

I'm looking too but for a 1st grade class and no milk, eggs or peanuts. Someone is bringing cupcakes.

I've thought sliced avacados, salsa and tortilla chips, pretzels, kiwi, carrots, maybe a creamy dip of some sort that has no dairy, possibly tofu based... ideas?), pickles, olives.

the only themey thing I can figure out are goblin toes, where you take a pickle, cut it in half, then slice a little spot in the end of the round part that you insert a sliced almond or roasted pupkin seed in to make a fingernail. Could do with the baby carrots too maybe.

Anyone know about peeled grape eyeballs? I had a link last night but computer too slow to open it. How to?

If you can do boiled eggs there is a way you can boil eggs and mold them into shapes by peeling them while still warm and putting them in the jello type mold things... I have seen them in bento box type meals.

[mamalemon]

We are making popcorn neckaces

[Teensy]

I am going to skewer fruit (grapes, pineapple, apples) onto wooden skewers and then poke them into a pumpking like hair. Then I will use toothpicks to add eyes and a mouth made out of fruit also.

[CarrieMF]

If you can take eggs, you can make deviled eggs & place a sliced black or green olive on top of the yolk park to make eyes.

[rahans]

Thanks for all the awesome ideas. I had no idea those websites existed - great info. I think I'm going to do the fruit filled oranges. I would love to try some of those crawlies but I've a feeling they won't turn out quite as good as the pix show! LOL - Very unartistic here!!

[veganf]

I usually make mini pumpkin muffins.

Some other ideas:
- carrot or squash hummus on english muffins or pitas with black olive JackOLantern faces, or mini pita pizzas with black olive faces.
- pumpkin sushi
- pretzel spider cookies

There are some great ideas here: http://wingitvegan.blogspot.com/

[lightheart]

what do you mean by pumpkin sushi? like rolls? how do you use pumpkin in it? would it be cooked in chuncks or mashed and spread on the rice?

What would you do for soy? how to make it usable for the kids? I'm assuming there are going to be plates, but if the kids pour a little out on the plate then it may spread over into the sweets or something..


Our big guy like the idea of the pumpkin head with fruit skewered hair, we are doing that with apples, red and green grapes canned pineapple, fresh we just couldn't afford

I'm also bringing in a can of drained pitted black olives.

Have a bag of baby carrots that are on reserve if I can't figure out something else, the parents at his school don't always bring and when they do it's usually very sugar based. A party isn't a party unless there are lots of leftovers right!

[mommy68]

Originally Posted by octobermom

Every time my DD has had a school party (mostly in her preschool years at this point) I've brought the same thing a try a sliced apples and bannanas cut into 3's (left in the skins) and that is it. They always go ann fast I never bring home a single left over its ussually the only thing that totally goes.

I was going to suggest this. When my DD was in kindergarten last year a mom brought in frozen banana slices that thawed quickly and grapes. They both got eaten faster than the cupcakes and cheeto's.

[beanma]

I'm telling you, those cheese bugs are totally easy, especially if you use cheese sticks since most of the cutting is already done for you. There's no art to it whatsoever. My kids helped me make some last year and they were 6 and 3. Very very easy — you just gotta get the chow mein noodles.

[mojumi]

For anyone thinking of trying out the scooped-orange jack-o-lanter fruit salad idea -- I 'test ran' this one today and found that it is way easier to work with a large grapefruit. I used a grapefruit spoon & a melon baller to get out the fruit, which worked pretty well. Instead of doing individual oranges for each child (too time intensive) I'm going to make one grapefruit 'jack-o-lantern' with fruit salad inside, and then skewer more fruit and stick that into the grapefruit as 'hair' -- combining two ideas from this thread, so thanks!!

[lightheart]

Can see our pumpkin headed grapes in the my picture link in siggy... album titled halloween 2008

ended up doing only grapes on the skewers, the apples kept splitting and falling off so they went in a bag and was sent on a plate, along with the pineapple I got!

So many complements on this being "so crafty" really neat" my reply... online!

THANK YOU!!!!!

[rahans]

Great grape pumkin head!!
The scooped fruit filled oranges were a hit with the kids - a lot of work as someone already mentioned. 13 of them - glad there were not more!