Toothpick Feast for Kids – A Great Way To Get Kids to Eat AND Clean Out The Fridge!

I do not like to call my kids picky, but sometimes it is difficult to get them to eat what I put on the table for them. If it is a fresh, delicious meal that they love to eat, then of course they will devour it, but if I try to feed them leftovers or something that does not look particularly appealing, then they write it off before even trying it.

My husband thought of a way to get our kids to eat by saying one simple thing at meal time, but after having three kids and mealtime being a little more chaotic, I am constantly thinking of new ways to liven up our meals. One way is having a “Toothpick Feast.”

I thought of this idea while visiting my parents with the boys, and two of their cousins. We were talking about what we could fix that all five kids would eat well, but also thinking about how much food we already had in the food. All of it was finger foods, but since my parents always have toothpicks on hand, I came up with the idea to line everything out, buffet style, and instruct the kids that everything had to be eaten with toothpicks.

They LOVED this idea! They loaded foods on their plates that they would have normally not wanted, and they ate most of it!

We put out leftover green beans, sugar snap peas, cut strawberries, ham cubes, olives, sausage, diced peaches, pickles, cantaloupe, leftover rolls, and crackers and cheese slices for good measure. Cheese cubes would have been better, but that’s okay, the cheese was eaten just fine!

The kids loved being able to eat with toothpicks (or their hands.) Seeing them try to figure out how they were going to poke the different foods was pretty funny. A hard carrot and cracker do not really do well with a toothpick, but ham cubes and fruit are perfect! The younger ones had a harder time trying to poke the olives, but hey, this is a great fine motor practice for little fingers.

I bet that we all could find at least five things in our fridge to serve in a toothpick feast for the kids. (Adding the word “feast” to anything pretty much makes it the best thing ever, but the way!) Make mealtime fun with this idea!

What else would you serve in a “Toothpick Feast?”