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School Lunch Ideas for Kids!

Tips for Planning Healthy School Lunch Ideas for Kids

If you’re in charge of sending your child off to school with a healthy lunch it can be challenging.

Lunch time is the perfect occasion to provide your children with nutritious food they enjoy

You may be able to plan your children’s school lunches fairly easily. If so, be thankful! My 5-year-old is a picky eater! One trick I have found that works for her are to make things “LOOK FUN” in her lunch box. See this post on how I do that easily in our YUMBOX.

If you have a wide range of foods your child can and will eat, and they are willing to try new things then your School Lunch Ideas for packing should be pretty easy!

It becomes tricky if your child has food allergies, is picky, or has to be on specific diets that are different from yours. If this sounds like your situation, and you are about to give up on creating a menu plan for your children, consider these tips to help you.

Start Simple

You don’t want to over-complicate your kid’s lunches. Try to stick to something simple for their lunch that can easily be repeated over the course of the week with some minor changes. This makes it easire for Mommy! For example, start with flavored greek yogurt and fruit. You can easily change up flavors and fruit each day.  This gives them something sweet but also gets fruit into their system. It also gives them active cultures and probiotics from the yogurt to help with digestion.

Make Minor Changes

You may be wondering how you will get the right nutrients into the lunch without putting in food your child will not eat. Consider making minor changes that you notice, but your kid won’t. For example, if you go with peanut butter switch to a nutrient-enhanced or fortified nut butter. Instead of regular yogurt, go with greek yogurt to boost their protein intake and B-vitamin intake. Instead of regular juice, that can contain a high amount of sugar, go with an organic fruit juice. If milk is the drink of the day, consider a nut-based organic milk instead. And, if you cut that fruit into shapes I promise it helps!

Record Likes and Dislikes

The most important thing to planning healthy lunches for your children is to record what works and what does not. A great way to do this is to write down lunches and keep each lunch plan and the results. If your kids like it, then keep it. If they don’t like certain aspects, then note that and make changes. This will help you with meal planning in the future and help you stick to what your kids like. It will also help keep costs down when you grocery shop.

Make Things Fun

This is just something that I have found helps my child eat more of the lunch that I pack for her. She is a picky eater but when I make things pretty and organized in her lunch box she tries new things.

You don’t want to over-complicate your kid’s lunches. Simple easy lunches are usually the best.

Here are some ideas to help you clean out your fridge and provide your child with a healthy, nutritious and delicious lunch box filler for school:

-Fruit Skewers – bananas, apples or pears cut into fun shapes then served on skewers

-Raw veggies with dips they enjoy like hummus or peanut butter

-Leftover veggie mini pizzas

-Pita bread with a wide range of healthy fillings, like cheese, tomato, hummus and veggies.

School lunches don’t need to be complicated. While the occasional lunch-able and juice box might make an appearance, planning simple, healthy school lunches is always worthwhile for your kids’ health.

Here is a quick list of tools I use:

 

 

Now for a few simple School Lunch Ideas!

Subscribe below to grab this Printable!

I love this site for Kids Lunch Ideas BentoLunch.net, and this is a good post to help you get your ideas flowing HERE!

By incorporating these tips, you can increase the chances of making a solid rotating meal plan that will work for your children’s lunches. And by making minor changes you can be happy with a healthy lunch for your child.

Once you figure out what meals work, you can work on future meal plans and help reduce your food bills and your stress.

You may also like:

• Yumbox Lunch Packing for Pre K- For a Picky Eater !
• Meal Planning Made Easy! -Free Printables!
• Meal Planning Tips- For Busy Families!
• School Lunch Ideas for Kids!

What do you pack for your child’s school lunch?