What kiddo doesn’t love fruit snacks? Now, you can feel happy about giving your kids this sweet treat. Stonyfield’s new organic fruit snacks are made using real fruit and vegetable juice and are free from artificial flavors, preservatives and GMOs. And they are shaped like cows too!
We excited to receive a delivery of the fruit snacks and we loved both the strawberry and mixed berry! They taste great and have a great consistency too!
Wouldn’t these treats be fun to add to your Halloween party goody bags? I think they would be a hit!
This post was written in partnership with Stonyfield – all opinions are my own.
Today is our 16th wedding anniversary! I feel very lucky. I am so happy to be married to my best friend – it makes life so much brighter! I can’t wait to spend the evening with Jayson reminiscing on everything that we have accomplished in 16 years. It’s pretty wonderful.
Sometimes making a simple sandwich is just the easiest, but if your student is sick of seeing the standard PB&J in his lunchbox (or you’re sick of making it!) it’s time for a box-lunch upgrade! Read on for three new lunchbox standards that we love in our home and think you will too.
#1 Wraps and Burritos
Wraps are a great way to get a few servings of healthy vegetables into your kid’s day. I like to make extra chicken breast at dinner the night before and combine it with cucumbers, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots—you name it!—into a hearty wrap the next day. Make sure to include a healthy fat like avocado and a protein like garbanzo beans or feta cheese so that your student gets a balanced meal. Burritos are one of my all time favorite lunch foods and I haven’t met a kid yet who didn’t like them, too! Create a healthy version by combining black beans and brown rice and a sprinkling of cheese. Send some avocado slices, lettuce, or tomatoes in a separate container and the meal is complete.
#2 Homemade Soup
Hearty, homemade soups and chillis are a great winter lunch to send to school with your kid. The next time you make a big pot for the family, portion some out into jars or Pyrex containers and freeze or store the portions in the fridge. On lunch morning, simply heat up the soup and pack it in a thermos. Add a slice of seedy, whole grain bread and the meal is complete!
#3 The Re-done Lunchable
Instead of serving your kids the highly-packaged, preservative-laden lunchables that come from the grocery store, create your own using healthy ingredients. Put together whole grain crackers and cheese with fruit and nuts or hummus with carrots, celery, pita bread, and almonds for a more filling, much more nutritious alternative.
What are your favorite organic lunches to send to school with your little ones? What’s the new PB&J in your household?
There’s a reason why we don’t try to explain climate change and all of its affects in entirety to kids and instead tell them about endangered species, encourage them to recycle, and educate them about their health. The worldview of a school-aged child isn’t that of an adult’s (and maybe that’s a good thing!), and it can be hard for kids to understand the enormous, long-term impact of their actions. And yet all of our actions impact those around us, near and far, in ways we can’t even imagine and it’s important to start teaching kids to consider their community at an early age. So how can we send them back to school with a green living mentality? Read on to learn where to start.
Start Small When kids might not even know their own weight, how can they be expected to understand the effects of the 18,000+ lbs of lunch waste they produce each year? Instead of trying to wrap their minds around an idea of that scale, start small. Send them to school with a non-toxic, stainless-steel lunchbox with reusable lunch bag and stainless steel water bottles, explaining that these items can be used over and over, for years, while paper and plastic lunch ware can’t be cleaned and must be thrown out every day. Give them the assignment of looking around the lunchroom and seeing how many brown paper sacks, sandwich bags, juice pouches, and snack wrappers get thrown into the trash each day. After a week, they’ll begin to understand just how much waste one student or lunchroom can really produce.
Hit Home Because your student may not notice the litter in the park or the hundreds of plastic bags stuck in trees around town, he may not even think twice before tossing his bubblegum wrapper on the dugout floor at a baseball game, or his empty soda can into the trash instead of the recycling bin. By volunteering to pick up trash on a local street or at a park, you’re showing your kids how to respect beauty, the environment, and our communal spaces.
Teach Mindfulness Does your kid wolf down dinner and dessert without once looking up, or while staring at the television, only to later complain of a stomach-ache or get a case of the grouchies? By teaching kids some simple mindfulness techniques, they can learn for themselves how healthy foods affect their bodies and how they feel after chowing down on junk. As a family, sit down for dinner together and take a deep breath before beginning the meal. Encourage kids to put down their utensils between bites, and after the meal is done ask children to notice their bodily sensations and feelings. Then ask again 30 minutes later. Children (and parents) might be surprised to notice that they didn’t really need that second helping of mashed potatoes and that a bag of cheetos before bed results in a junk food hangover. Using simple techniques like these help your children learn about health from the inside out, and the method will serve them well in other areas of life as well.
What green tips, concepts, and facts have your kids embraced? What questions do they ask about living healthy? Who do they think makes up their community?
Back-to-school time is a lot like Christmas—there’s excitement, stress, and a lot of buying. Most parents with school-aged children have spent a small fortune on school supplies and snacks at the beginning of the year only to discover a mountain of barely-used pencils and notebooks at the end of the year—not to mention a car littered with fruit snack wrappers. As parents, we lead by example, and the practices we employ today will rub off on our kids. Here are 4 simple ways to reduce waste this school year and set a green example for your kids.
#1 Avoid Buying in Bulk
Those bulk packages of pens, notebooks, snacks, and juice boxes are tempting, but the truth is that many of these products are sold cheaply in bulk because they’re unhealthy, cheaply made, or don’t follow environmentally-friendly productions standards. Instead, compile a list of everything you need based on all your kids’ school supply sheets and look for supplies that are made from recycled materials or that can be recycled or refilled later. As far as snacks, shopping locally for healthy fruits and veggies and setting aside a couple hours a week to bake a batch of granola or whole grain muffins to send the school will ensure that your kids eat healthy without creating a ton of trash.
#2 Use Resusable Lunchware
The average American family creates 4,320 pieces of unnecessary lunch waste, mostly plastic packaging. That adds up to a lot of trash in the landfills and ocean with a lot of dollars down the toilet. Instead of buying pre-packaged snacks and milks and sending lunches to school in brown bags and plastic baggies, purchase non-toxic, reusable lunch boxes and snack cups for your kids to take lunch to school in and send water and milk in stainless steel bottles. Throw in a cloth napkin and reusable cutlery and you’ll eliminate ALL of the 4,320 pieces of lunch waste your family would normally produce!
#3 Choose Minimally Packaged Products
When possible, buy notebooks and supplies that don’t come in plastic wrappers or extra boxes, which are totally unnecessary. Every piece of non-degradable plastic trash that you throw away ends up in a landfill or adding to the island of trash in the ocean.
#4 Green Your School Commute
A great, easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is by having your kids walk, bike, or ride the bus to school. Walking or biking will give kids a little exercise to boost their energy and sharpness before class and let them enjoy the outdoors at the same time. If safety is a concern where you live, walk or bike your kids to school instead of driving them, or see if another student who already walks to school has a parent who can tag along.
What are some simple ways your family has reduced waste during the school year?
