Learn with Play at Home: Healthy Veggie Christmas Tree Share Platter. Cooking with Kids.

This year we thought that we'd come up with a healthy Christmas share platter, bound to stand out amongst all the sweets and treats that usually adorn the Christmas party table.

This fruit (my kids wanted to point out that some of the ingredients we use are technically fruits) and vegetable Christmas tree share platter would be perfect for taking along to a class party or family get together and is simple enough to get the kids involved in the preparation. I've found over the years that having children regularly involved in cooking and food preparation, makes them more inclined to try new things and gives them the information needed for making future choices for themselves based on their knowledge of foods, our needs and healthy living.

Healthy Veggie Christmas Tree Share Platter

Ingredients: (we used)

Celery
Cucumber
Snow peas
Sugar snap peas
Red and Yellow Capsicum (peppers)
Red and yellow cherry tomatoes
Olives (black and green stuffed)
Carrot
Cheese (cheddar cheese slices) Optional- leave out for dairy free option

Materials:

Knife
Chopping board
Peeler
Star cookie cutter (optional)
Large platter

Don't forget, before you start any food preparation you need to wash your hands.

Chop your carrot, celery and cucumber into sticks around the same size and length. Depending on your child's knife skills, you might want to help them with this part.

Older children can assist with the peeling and chopping of the harder vegetables.

Younger children will enjoy cutting stars out of slices of real cheese.

Halve your cherry tomatoes, olives and cut thin slices of capsicum to decorate the tree.

With your ingredients prepped, you are ready to build your tree! Children of all ages can help with this part.

Use the carrot sticks for the base and your cucumber and celery sticks to build the shape of the tree.

Layer your snow peas and sugar snap peas over and in your tree.

Arrange your capsicum strips on top of the tree for tinsel.

Decorate all over the tree with your tomatoes and olives.

For the finishing touches, add your star shaped cheese. For a dairy free option, you could cut stars from yellow capsicum.

Serve your tree fresh with your favourite dips and watch it disappear.

We really enjoyed creating this Veggie Christmas Tree and got to practice many kitchen skills, fine-motor skills and talk about different foods and healthy eating along the way. The kids (and I) were really impressed with the results at the end and it was hard to photograph before my kids wanted to dig in!

Here are some more Christmas Recipe ideas you may want to try with the kids:

Happy creating,

Debs :)

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