Kids Make Their Own Snack Tutorial: Butterfly in My Belly

We have been all about the butterfly lately. Save me the psycho-babble about why the girls and I would be suddenly so interested in an animal so light and free and airy, etc. Let's just sublimate the uncomfortable emotions, okay, and just study butterflies.

Willow found this basic recipe in the back of a Highlights magazine and asked to make it. Despite the fact that it's gonna look completely different when we're done with it, and it's made of, you know, all different foods, it is, of course, delicious and awesome.

You will need:

• two pieces of bread
• child's scissors
• cream cheese
• food coloring and small zip-top baggies
• scissors, rolling pin, and butter knife
• carrot, already scraped
• raisins (or nuts or seeds)

1. Let the kiddo cut each piece of bread into a beautiful butterfly wing:

Willow wasted a huge amount of each piece of bread on this. I've got the rest of the bread in a baggie in the refrigerator right now--if the girls ask to make this snack a couple of more times, I'll have enough leftover bread to make bread pudding, and if not, I'll chop it up and put it in my larger breadcrumbs baggie in the freezer.

2. Put a couple of tablespoons of cream cheese into two or more little zip-top baggies, and have the kiddo choose a different color to dye each amount of cream cheese. After you put the color in each appropriate baggie, seal it and hand it to the kid to moosh around until the cream cheese is evenly dyed.

3. Squoosh all the cream cheese into one bottom corner of the baggie (I use a rolling pin), cut off that corner, and let the kiddo use the baggies like pastry bags to spread the cream cheese on the bread. The kiddo will also want to use the butter knife, and her fingers:

This, of course, is perfectly fine.

4. Give the kiddo a scraped carrot and have her lay out her butterfly with its beautiful wings, then give her some raisins or nuts or seeds so that she can make beautiful polka dots:

The finished product will be both absolutely gorgeous--

--and wonderfully delicious:

We've got no fewer than three more butterfly projects already in the bag, so stay tuned...