100 Day Snack Recommendations

Our 100 Day annual snack varies by where I manage to go shopping, but the deal is as follows:

1. There are nine different items, of which each child takes ten;
2. The last ten items are added by me while the child counts;
3. Those ten items are chocolate chips, the "sometimes snack" additive to celebrate the 100th Day.

This year the other nine items were:

1. Popcorn
2. Chex
3. Raisins
4. Plantain Chips (yes yes, not the healthiest)
5. Dehydrated Sweet Corn Kernels
6. Happy Puffs (this organic toddler snack thing - I eat it and had a lot sitting around at school)
7. Almonds (no tree nut allergies in this class, nor any peanut allergy so no worries about contagion from ingredients)
8. Dehydrated Apple Slices
9. Animal Crackers (again, not the healthiest but not the worst, either).

When I have time to get to a Trader Joe's or similar, I tend to use more dried fruit and the animal crackers would probably be something of equally questionable health value like sesame sticks.  I have in the past used wasabi peas, too - most of the kids like these.  (Besides, if a child reports s/he doesn't like something, I observe that there are ninety other snacks in the bag - there's plenty to eat, but on the 100th day you need 100 snacks.)

If I had a lot of nut/milk allergies I would do something with fruit - like cutting a slice of apple/pear/melon/plum into ten pieces, adding ten berries and so on up to one hundred.  This would be more expensive - as it is, even cheap 100 day trail mix is probably $30 or so.

Whatever you use, the snack is huge and the kids won't finish it, but they enjoy making it.  I think they are less tempted to overeat it because they know it is 100 things, therefore a lot.