It's All In the Plating

As many will tell you, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Not just for the nutritional aspect, but for the tone that it starts for your kids. My daughter's first words when she wakes are "bekfast now daddy". And that is when the fun begins.

Breakfast can be a pretty stressful time. If your kids are like mine, they shout out orders like a 60 year old waitress at a New York diner. It would be easy to lose your cool. The trick is to make breakfast an entertaining experience. Here are a couple of simple things that I do to keep the kids engaged:

• Pancake Pals: Take a combination of microwave pancakes (full and silver dollar sized) to create the body. Silver dollar for head, full size for belly, and cut two dollar sized in half for arms and legs. Next you want to use raisins, chocolate chips, bananas, or anything else that you can come up with for eyes, noses, etc. Let the kids help you decorate. In the end, these will look like disfigured creatures, but your kids will enjoy it and who the hell are you, Martha Stewart.
  
  
• The French Toast 500: Take microwave french toast sticks (keep frozen) and build a race course on your kitchen table. The take some hot wheel cars and have them lined up and ready to go when the kids wake up. Tell them they need to complete 5 laps and then take pit stops for "fuel". Have juice, fruit and cereal on the side for this stops.
  
  
• Quicksand Trap: Nothing inspires a kid more than the fear that one of their favorite characters might die a slow and horrible death. Or at least that was my thought when I began to play Quicksand Trap. The ideas is pretty straight forward. Take a bowl of microwave oatmeal and bury one of your kid's favorite action figure neck deep in it. Explain to them that the character was out on a special mission and became trapped in quicksand. They need your help to dig out. Extra points if you play the Indiana Jones theme while they are eating it.
  
  
• Slime (or Ogre Poop): Yogurt + Green Food coloring = awesome grossness that any kid will be happy to gobble up.

There are also tons of sites out there for you if you are interested in finding more ideas. Here are a couple of my favorites:

• Kid's Crave
• Making Foods Fun
• About.com Family Crafts

Do you have any suggestions or breakfast time ideas?

Photo Source: Patrick Q

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