The Queen Is in the Kitchen

Color Me Zestful: Zucchini

FUN WITH CRAYONS: A GARDEN SIGN TO COLOR

Graphic artist Gerald G. created a series of sweet garden signs, available for free download at openclipart.org, to glue to a stick and poke in the dirt next to your newly planted seeds in the garden.

You can find his images for zucchini, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, yellow and green string beans, radishes and pumpkins here, in sizes appropriate for a garden sign. I’ve adapted the zucchini sign as a coloring page. (This might be a nice one to watercolor, too.)

Print out a copy for each of your kids and one for you. Share a few fun facts about zucchini while you color or paint. There’s nothing like engaging in creative work together to keep your family close. The family that plays together, stays together!

1 ZUCCHINI, 2 ZUCCHINI, 3 ZUCCHINI, 4! FUN VEGGIE BOOKS FOR KIDS

“Zucchini.” Doesn’t the word just roll off the tongue? Somebody ought to write a song about it.

Somebody has written a children’s book about it. In fact, four somebody’s! Here’s a quartet of fabulous zucchini books to introduce this giggle-inducing veggie to your kids.

Make the introduction. Read a book, and the kids will be clamoring for a zucchini all their own!

10 FUN FACTS ABOUT ZUCCHINI

The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. (See #10 below.) Your kids will enjoy learning these fun facts about zucchini and trying them out on their favorite grownup:

1. The world’s largest zucchini on record was 69-1/2 inches long and weighed 65 pounds! It probably didn’t taste that great–if anyone even tried to eat it–because…

2. When it comes to zucchinis, biggest is not best. The most flavorful zucchinis are small- to medium-sized.

USING A BELOVED BOOK TO ENCOURAGE HEALTHY EATING

It’s hard to find a kid, a mom and dad or even a grandma and grandpa who don’t know Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

In fact, 2019 will mark the 50^th anniversary of the publication of this beloved picture book, in which a little egg hatches into a tiny (and very hungry!) caterpillar.

After eating his way through five days of delicious fruits, our intrepid caterpillar eats so many things on the sixth day—most of them decidedly not healthy—that he develops a stomachache. He is no longer a little caterpillar, either. He is a big, fat caterpillar. And he won’t be that for long….

A “DADDY BLOGGER” TALKS ABOUT KIDS & HEALTHY EATING

I met John S. Green, a.k.a. “Papa Green Bean,” in a local writers’ group and was immediately drawn to his puckish sense of humor. Papa Green Bean is, among other things, a poet, a scholar and a Montessori-trained teacher.

(Okay, so he looks more like a bottle of sriracha sauce than a green bean in this photo, but he can be forgiven–he’s a dad and it was Halloween!)

John’s blog, Papa Green Bean: Sharing Simple Insights for Nurturing Young Children, is thoughtful, playful and relevant for parents who want to raise their kids into “cheerful, curious, creative, and confident individuals.” And don’t we all?