Silly Snack Fishing Fun

Can the few minutes just before snack time get a little crazy at your house?  I find the 5 minutes before a meal can sometimes feel like a marathon when the children are tired and hungry.  We don’t watch TV at my home daycare so some days I have to resort to desperate measures to hold the chaos at bay until I can get food on the table.  I use humour.  It works 95% of the time.

Yesterday the children were cranky and antsy for lunch but I needed a few extra minutes to finish making the spaghetti.  As I worked, I told them we were having ‘worms’ for lunch today.  This type of silliness immediately got their attention.  They wanted to know what kind of worms?  Were they real worms? What did they look like? Fat or skinny? etc.  I held up a scoop of spaghetti and declared the worms ready to eat!  The children who were in the kitchen delighted in announcing to the others playing that we were eating worms today.

The whole charade extended into naming the rest of our food (bread was tree bark, carrots sticks were twigs, cucumber slices were leaves, etc) and the children were baby birds eating worms.  This little imaginative scenario took their minds off of their hunger and fatigue and bought me the few extra minutes I needed.

Today, I gave the children bananas sliced lengthwise and told them they were fishing poles.  They also received dry Cheerios.  When the moist banana touches the dry Cheerio, it sticks.  So the children were able to use their fishing poles to catch Cheerio fish.  This is a great activity to keep toddlers busy at snack time when you need a few extra minutes.

What types of silly games do your children enjoy playing at snack time?