Keep your child’s snacking in check with a home snack shop
Is your child snacking every 30 minutes and you’re worried they’re going to eat you out of house and home? We have an idea for you: open your own snack shop and change the way you approach snacks at home.
Putting the kids in control of their own snacking isn’t as crazy as it sounds. We’ve priced up a range of healthy snacks and not-so-healthy treats to let your kids choose from within a daily budget. It’s safe to say they’ll start limiting the chocolate bars when they realise they can get more healthy snacks for their money.
Why open a home snack shop?
There are loads of benefits to opening your own home snack shop. Your children will:
- Learn which foods are healthy (cheap) and which foods are less healthy (more expensive)
- Learn to understand the value of money and that snacks do not grow on trees
- Begin to understand the principles of eating healthy food frequently (because they can afford to buy lots of it) and only treating themselves to unhealthy food in moderation (because it costs too much to eat more than once per day)
- Gain independence and responsibility over their own dietary choices
Here’s how it works:
Daily allowance
Give your children £1 each day to spend at the snack shop. Don’t worry about having to spend money each day as you are the snack shop owner, so you’ll get it back each day.
Time to decide
Print and stick a snack list to your cupboards. Every time your child asks for a snack, they will have to decide carefully what they would like to spend their money on. Healthy snacks are cheaper than unhealthy snacks. So they will have to choose whether they would like to spend their money wisely on a few different healthy snacks or blow their money on something less healthy.
Spend it or lose it
No carrying pennies over to the next day. Each day a new £1 allowance is given.
What to keep in mind
- Remember, everything eaten in between meals counts as a snack!
- Don’t forget about proper portion sizes
- Act like a real shopkeeper and don’t give out free snacks (no matter how much they ask) – once the money is gone, it’s gone