Heart Shaped Breadsticks Recipe

Here’s how to make heart-shaped breadsticks for Valentine’s Day using pre-made dough. It includes a lesson about the Grains Group and activities related to grains for kids.

Making food in the shape of hearts for Valentines day is a hit with most kids. Here’s an idea for creating heart shaped bread with kids. We’ve shared these with my child’s class and it’s a big hit and an easy way to stay away from sugary sweets that we typically see at holiday parties.

Making Heart Shape Breadsticks with Kids

We are learning about the Grains Group in our Little Hands that Cook with Books Balanced Eating Fun Series!  It’s getting close to Valentine’s Day so I thought it would be to include a heart into the lesson so we’re making heart shaped breadsticks.

My daughter was very excited to make her very own heart breadsticks so I decided to let her use the premade dough. The next time we do this we’ll make it whole wheat breadstick recipe to add some more Grains into our diet. I want her to know the process of making bread from scratch. 

You could easily do heart shaped pretzels too! 

Here’s what we used to make our heart shaped breadsticks.

Heart Shaped Breadsticks

Ingredients

• Refrigerated Breadsticks from Pillsbury
• butter
• garlic salt (or desired herb)
• Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Separate dough into 12 strips
2. Take two strips and twist and join to create heart shape on baking sheet
3. Brush with melted butter
4. Sprinkle with herbs and parmesean cheese
5. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes
6.  Enjoy with someone you LOVE!

Books About the Grains Group

The Grain Group by Mari C. Schuh

The Great Grains Group  by Marcie Aboff

While our breadsticks were cooking we had a Lesson about the Grains Group.I had her find items in the pantry that she thought would belong into the Grains Group.  We laid them out onto the counter and labeled them with the premade labels I made. They included words like bread, cereal, rice, pasta, popcorn, crackers. 

Once we found the items we played a quick game to decide if they belonged into the Whole Grains Group or Refined Grains Group. I pulled out some pictures I printed of the different whole grains, here’s the site. 

Ideally I would like to have containers full of whole grains too for a more hands on approach. Then we tried to find items in our pantry that contained whole grains. Here’s the list of Whole Grain Words to look for that we used that you can use with your little ones!

Whole Grains and Refined Grains Game

What is a Portion?  

Now that my own child is 5 years old I felt it was time for her to learn about how to read the label on boxes and understand what a “Portion Size” is.  We took some of our favorite snacks and read the label and served them into containers to truly understand what is in a serving.  I think it was a great learning opportunity for her to visually comprehend how much she needs of some of her favorite snacks.  And to understand that at least half of our grains each day should be from the Whole Grains group.

Grains Group Activities

• Word Search from Nourish Interactive
• Coloring Sheet of the Grains Group
• Sort the Grains
• Let’s Make Bread
• Whole Grain Picture and Word Sort

Here’s a few other Heart Shaped Recipes to make with your child.

Grain Recipes for Kids to Make

Here’s an additional Little Hands that Cook with Books Lesson about the Grains Group!

• Teddy Bear Biscuits
• Teddy Bear Food Group Book with Printable Words
• Moon Bread Recipe
• Polar Bead Biscuits
• Heart Shaped Pancakes
• Homemade Noodles
• Coconut Bread
• Orange Surprise Strawberry Jam Muffins
• Salted Caramel Pumpkin Muffins
• Raspberry Coconut Muffins

We brought our Heart Breadsticks to a Valentine’s Day Playdate.  The kids loved them, even my baby girl!

Next time we’re going to learn how is flour made and how bread is made?  Who better to teach us than The Little Red Hen. Until then enjoy…

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