Back-to-school Lunches Even The Pickiest Eaters Will Like

by Wendy Navarro
Mom of 3 and Owner of Saige Nicoles baby and children's boutique

Slowly, my eyes glaze over as I look through the 24 isles of food at my local grocery store. My head feels light and my thinking is fuzzy as I try to determine how I can possibly create school lunches that are interesting enough and tasty enough for my 3 school aged children to eat 180 days out of the year. For a moment I just stand there – ‘That’s 540 freakin’ lunches!’ I blurt out suddenly, startling the poor man next to me. I quickly apologize, purchase the few things I picked up for dinner and decide that I really need to figure this out before school starts.

I am now on a quest.I scour the internet for lunchbox ideas and turn to our savvy group of mommies on Facebook for their child’s lunchtime favorites. I came across an amazing (sometimes overwhelming) amount of information; from ideas for healthy lunches, fun lunches and no-waste lunch box ideas I’d not heard of before.

My first suggestion comes from my Facebook Friend, Justine Lackey, business owner and busy mom (http://www.goodcentsbookkeeping.com/) who turned me on to bento box lunches. When she first mentioned bento boxes admittedly, I had no idea what they were. So, I decided to educate myself. And I love it!

Bento boxes (obento, Japanese for lunchbox) are sustainable lunchboxes that you use over and over (very eco-friendly). They are generally shallow and seal tightly so that food does not shift or leak. Traditional bento lunches include traditional Japanese staples, i.e. rice or noodles and include a balanced diet of meat, fish and egg in small bite sized portions arranged in an artistic, esthetically beautiful manner. Today, many parents are taking the creativity of traditional bento boxes and packing some amazing school lunches like the one left. 
 Justine’s daughter enjoys her bento box with:

• Dumplings (she suggests the frozen chicken or vegetable dumplings from Trader Joes)
• Cut up cucumber with dunking sauce, and
• Sticky rice molded into cute shapes

The bento lunch box pictured above (hapabento.com) includes:

• Blueberries and bite sized pieces of carrots wrapped in thinly sliced cucumber
• Cherry tomatoes
• Grapes
• Low sodium cold cuts
• Grilled cheese sandwich on whole grain bread. Wheels are cheese cutouts and a sliced pickle makes the window. Super cute!

Try Something New: With three children at 3 different stages in life it’s almost impossible to find get a consensus on what to pack for lunch. They each have their favorites but this year we’re trying out a few new things.

• Sandwich On A Stick: Son, Vaughn, Kindergarten: Bite sized pieces of bread, turkey, cherry tomatoes, cheese, cucumber and lettuce skewered on pretzel sticks. Ice cold bottled water, any fresh fruit mix and a cookie.
• Tuna Pita: Son, Quentin, 8th Grade: Tuna and Swiss in pita bread with shredded lettuce. Separate tuna in different container to avoid sbs (soggy bread syndrome), 1 whole pickle, ice water, red apple and granola bar.
• Chicken and Hummus Wrap: Daughter, Saige, Sophomore High School: Hummus spread on whole wheat tortillas, low sodium chicken breast, lettuce, cucumber, ice cold water, mix of blueberries and strawberries, cookie.

Kathy Russo, mom and owner of Travel With The Magic (http://www.travelwiththemagic.com/) also suggests packing healthy snacks like fruit, granola bars and chocolate milk for a well-rounded lunch and extra snacks if your child will be participating in extracurricular activities.

Food For Thought:

• Take your kids shopping and make them a part of the planning process.
• Pack lunches in insulated, BPA Bisphenol-A free tote like the cute Zoo Animals number (below right) by Wildkin available at http://www.saigenicoles.com/
• Test drive newly found ideas on your children at home.

• Pack cold packs to keep food cool or freeze water bottles. They will end up melting in time for lunch and voila your child has ice-cold refreshing water.
• Choose low-fat or low sugar alternatives.
• Look for brain foods containing omega rich ingredients. Parenting.com has a nice list which includes the yummy Pomegranate and Blueberry Juice by MinuteMaid.
• Remind your children to keep food from prolonged exposure to the sun.

I hope this article provides you and your family with a few new, yummy ideas. If you have any other great ideas please post them.

Resources:
Hapa Bento: http://www.hapabento.com/
Family Fun: Back To School Sandwiches
Parenting.com
Japanistic.com: Cute BPA-free bento boxes

Be The First to Preview the Latest 2010 Fall / Winter Children's Boutique Fashion Trends

Pre-order Fall Fashions from your favorite boutique children's lines including Right Bank Babies, Nohi Kids, Livie and Luca, Decaf Plush and more...!

Fall / Winter Preview Sale Only at SaigeNicoles.com

Have Fun With Your Child While He/She Learns To Express Emotions With Kimochis: Toys With Feelings Inside and ENTER TO WIN

Kimochis are amazing!

Boost Your Child's Confidence With Kimochis while having fun playing too! 

These toys with feelings inside are designed to help your little one develop social and emotional intelligence.

(KEY.MO.CHEE) means “feeling” in Japanese. Feelings can be messy…Kimochis can help! Using the Kimochi characters, kids can get in touch with their own emotions in a fun and comfortable way; and when kids can communicate their feelings, they cultivate confidence and character!

Available in 4 squeezable, huggable characters including; Cloud, Bug, Cat and Huggtopus, each Kimochi comes with it's own set of emotions like, happy, sad or mad and a How To Feel Guide providing parents and caregivers a helping hand too!
What parents say about Kimochis:


"Kimochis are a great way to start a conversation with your kids. We put a bowl of feelings on our dinner table to engage our kids and to check in on them to make sure they are feeling good! The younger ones won't put Cloud down and he has replaced ole rabbit as a good night companion! Bravo! What a special toy."

"This is a tool that helps facilitate communication and interaction between family members and even my toddler, of few words but lots of emotion, recognizes the facial expressions that go with each emotion. My sister, who has a masters in psychology, will use this personally and professionally. Awesome!"


This month, 1 Lucky Saige Nicole's Subscriber or Facebook Friend will win Kimochi "Cloud".
To be entered you must:

• Subscribe to Saige Nicole's mailing list or "Like" us on Facebook
• Find out more about Kimochi Feeling Toys on our web-site
• Return here and post a comment about why you would like a Kimochi for your child.  Be sure and include your information (i.e. name under which you subscribed or "Liked" us) so that we may contact you if you win. 

Fine Print: Drawing is limited to subscribers within the USA. Subscribers must be at least 18 years of age. Winner will be chosen at random and contacted via e-mail. Winner must respond within 24 hours or another winner will be chosen.

 Shop For Your Kimochi Today

8 Key Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Incoming Kindergartner For A Successful School Year!

by Michelle Deets Haynes, Owner and Tutor, Clarity Learning Private Tutoring for Saige Nicole's baby and toddler boutique

Kindergarten is on the horizon for many families. Priming your child for certain skills and concepts will make the year easier for your child, the teacher, and you!

Remember that kindergarten is now first grade. Children must become readers before first grade, so the more fluent they are coming in, the more easily they will transition into readers with decoding skills and a sight vocabulary. In a perfect world, it would be fabulous if every kindergartner entered class able to identify all 26 letters and all 10 digits. It would be great if the child could recite the alphabet in order and label letters in isolation. Likewise, knowing numbers to 10 or 20 would be nice. The ability to write numbers in order and in isolation is a wonderful head start.

However, not every little person is in the same developmental and knowledge processing stage. When I work with students, I start with what they can do and move forward to what they need to know. If your child doesn't understand that there are symbols called letters and those letters have names, don't worry about asking, "What sound does T make?"

1.  Connecting with symbols: If you have been reading with your child (you HAVE been reading, right...?), he will see that you’re attending to symbols and those symbols are giving you words.

• Point to the words when you read. This emphasizes that symbol groups correspond with words.
• Point to a letter and ask your child to find that symbol elsewhere on the page. ("Here's an m. Where is another m on this page?")
• Letters and numbers are constructed of basic shapes (circles, lines, humps, dots, curls...): Help your child connect with the construction of letters and numbers.
• Play I-Spy with the book page. “I spy with my little eye a letter that has a circle in it.” Your child should point to any a, b, d, g, o, p, or q on the page. (Different fonts produce different versions of “a”; ideally, practice this with books that use the circle/line “a.”
• You can step this up to “I spy with my little eye a letter that has a circle AND a line in it.” Now b, d, p, and q are good choices.

2.  Small motor coordination: Being able to control pencils, crayons, and scissors is crucial. Do activities that build writing skills and strengthen the muscles needed to manipulate a pencil. We grip a pencil in a sort of three-fingered pinch. In order of easy to difficult, your child can:

• pick up balls of clay and pinch them flat.
• pretend her pointer, middle finger, and thumb are a puppet's mouth. The two of you can have a puppet conversation, thereby practicing that pinching action.
• draw in sand or dirt with a short stick (no longer than a pencil). If there's room, have him or her draw a road system or map for cars. 
• fill a baking pan with a quarter inch of sand and let her draw pictures in the sand with a pencil. 
• have your child copy the letters of his name on paper.
• Always watch that your child has the correct three-finger pinch hold, and praise him for doing it correctly! Be specific in your praise: “Wow! Your fingers are in the perfect place on your pencil! Nice work!”

3.  Letter and number recognition: Some kids are ready to look at letters and numbers and give them names, while others are suspicious of this and aware that it’s work. Just like cats “know” when you’re trying to catch them to administer medicine, some kids “know” that you’re trying to make them learn icky letters. These children may not be ready to connect symbols with names. 
Some children can quickly turn letter learning into a tearful dramafest. If this is the case, keep the sessions short (five minutes and build up) and active. As with studying at any age, boredom is the enemy! Here are some ideas:

• Is it a letter or a number? Some children are still reconciling the idea that some symbols are letters and others are numbers. Mix up a pile of letter and number cards. In a version of Stand Up, Sit Down, have her stand when she sees a number and sit when she sees a letter. (This gets out the wiggles, too.) 
• A noisy (but fun!) version of this is to yell “number!” or “letter!” as appropriate.
• A silent version is thumbs up for the number and thumbs down for the letter. This is a great activity when you’re out to dinner.
• Play ball! Write three to five lower case letters on a beach ball. Make the letters about 1.5" to 2" tall. You might use the letters in her name. Try to use distinctly different letters if you’re just starting out. The letters b, d, p, and q are too similar; a, c, f, g, and m are all really different. Toss the ball to your child. Ask her to name the letter closest to her right thumb. This also practices right versus left, hand-eye coordination, and focusing the eyes. Stay close enough that you can confirm or correct her answer.
• Using another ball, repeat with numbers. In addition to the numbers she knows, include three more that she needs to practice. 
• Let him be the teacher. Have him show you letter cards so that YOU can say the letter names. Once he reliably recognizes some letters, tell him you’re going to make some mistakes that he needs to catch. Kids LOVE to catch adults in errors! (Repeat with number cards.)
• Stand on the letters/numbers. Purchase a cheap, plastic tablecloth. Using a wide-tipped, permanent marker, grid the tablecloth into one-foot squares and write a large, lower-case letter in each square. 
• Say a letter name and have her stand on it. “Jump on the b!”, “Reach down and touch the m.”, “What letter are you on now?”

4.  Associate sounds with letters: Once your child knows certain letters’ names, you can move forward to connecting sounds and letters. Keep it fun!

• Toy sort. When I was a child, every Breyer horse and every toy car had a name. Drawing from the letters your child recognizes, fold a few index cards into tents and label each one with a letter. Set the cards into lanes on the floor. Let’s say you have b, j, t, and z. 
• Ask your child to bring over any toys whose names start with /b/. Line up Bear, Barky, Bronto, and Buzz Lightyear behind the b card. Jo-jo and Jumpy will park behind the j tag and so on.
• After some practice, let your child line up some toys on his own so he can experiment with these “beginning of the name” sounds. Be generous with praise and make corrections kindly (“Oh my goodness! How did Buzz get into the t-line?! Is his name Tuzz?!”).
• Using that tablecloth again, ask him to stand on the letter that says /mmm/. 

5.  Be aware of everyone’s frustration level. When parents say, “Come on, you know this!” the learning experience tends to degrade. 

• Instead, say, “Try twice, and then I will tell you the name of the letter.” 
• Or, if you really are certain she knows the answer, say, “If I tell you the name of the letter, you’re going to say, ‘Oh! I knew that!’” and laugh about it. 
• No matter what, be positive and be quick with genuine, specific praise.

6.  Encourage effort: “That wasn’t the right letter, but I sure like how you thought about it and tried.”

7.  Start grooming your child for the fact that she is not the only child in the room. Kindergarten includes raising your hand but sometimes not being called upon. 

• To practice this, sit at the table with your child and two other stuffed animal “classmates.” Explain that you’re going to read a book aloud and will be asking questions of the child, Mr. Bear, and Miss Kitty. Everyone must raise his or her hand to answer, but each time you will only call on one "student." 
• Switch between calling on your child and “calling on” a stuffed animal. This will help your child practice sharing, manners, and delayed attention.

8.  A child should be self-sufficient in the bathroom. The more independence you build at home, the less time the teacher must spend on resolving bathroom issues. That leaves more time for the teacher to impart knowledge to your child!

Finally, be honest with yourself and therefore kind to your child. If your little one was born after September and has difficulty listening for any length of time, consider another year of maturing in preschool and then enter kindergarten the next year. Many parents do this. Teachers agree that these kids are much more successful in kindergarten the next year. That leads to future academic success, better self-esteem, and so on!

Don’t worry about making your child fluent with letters and numbers before he enters kindergarten. That’s what kindergarten is for. But if you can add to his knowledge and prime him for some skills, the year will be that much easier for all concerned. Have fun with your little one and enjoy this big step into academics!