I'm willing to bet that I am not the only parent who asks their child what they learned at school today and is often met with silence, a few mumbles or the much dreaded "nothing." I nearly choked on my glass of wine at a cocktail party I was at in Arkansas when I heard what one person's mortgage payment was and realized my monthly preschool tuition was significantly higher. So at the risk of sounding like my dad I'll just say she better be learning something...
However I can't put all the blame on Kayla. I remember giving those same responses to my parents. So perhaps I need to ask more leading questions to get answers. Fortunately, her school has a little dry erase board on the door to each classroom that gives parents the run down of what the class has been learning. A few weeks ago it was dinosaurs so when I was cruising through Walmart on a mission to find pool toys and picking up food for yet another class party I grabbed some regular Tyson chicken nuggets and these dinosaur nuggets.
Which I quickly realized look just like bunnies if you turn the T-rex ones upside down. Very appropriate for springtime food art, don't you think? One thing I really like is that Tyson I'll spare you my spiel about how I'm a vegetable pusher and how I attempt to use food art as a way to get those extra servings in. This time around I wanted a conversation piece. Kayla has been absolutely fixated on volcanoes. "Mommy can you draw a volcano?" "Mommy volcanoes have HOT lava." and on and on and on. Fixated! So I figured if I put a volcano and some dinos together it wouldn't be too hard to get her talking about the dinosaurs too.
Let me just say that I am no artist, but drawing with condiments is actually really easy. This volcano was done in just one take, no practice run or anything. Put whatever you're using into a sandwich bag and cut the smallest bit of the tip off. Too big and you'll have a royal mess. To make the volcano below I drew the outline in BBQ sauce and then drew over it in ketchup for the lava pouring out. Keep in mind that the person judging your food art will not be a pool of moms on Pinterest and will be a scribble producing child who will be thrilled with whatever you come up with!
I don't know if it's the same in your house, but here my biggest struggle is getting Kayla to eat the proteins on her plate, not the fruits and vegetables. Should an errant piece of a seasoning make it's way onto a bit of chicken I am called in to "take off the black thing!" as though I'm responding to a 3 alarm fire. So I will say that it's nice to have an easy kid friendly option once in a while like chicken nuggets where I know there will be no battle. One thing I was very pleasantly surprised to see is that Tyson started changing up how they do things a bit and now these nuggets are made with whole grain breading.
And if you're an original chicken nugget devotee or have a child who requires something a bit more girly than mine does here's a little butterfly you can easily make. I just took a carrot, peeled it and cut it, added some cantaloupe ball antennae and decorated some Tyson nuggets with with ketchup and BBQ sauce.
If you want to make a pattern on the wings similar to a real butterfly you can use a toothpick to blend the two condiments together. Of course you can get really fancy and start making different colors with dyed ranch dressing but you know me, I try to avoid food coloring as much as possible. In a total turnaround from last week's luck this butterfly came up at quite the convenient time...it seems we're on to ladybugs and butterflies at school! Oh and no surprise to me, but Kayla was absolutely over the moon about her special dino dinner and the butterfly one that followed a week later.
