Next week, it begins.
The early mornings. The early bedtimes. The homework.
And the lunch-making. Which is not really my favorite part.
The first day that my first child went to kindergarten, I packed his lunch sack so full that it wouldn’t close. It had a sandwich, chips, string cheese, an apple, carrots, and more.
After 5 1/2 years of at-home lunches, I really had no concept of how much my child could/would eat during their school lunch period.
I’ve adjusted for the most part and other than being accused of being the ONLY mother in the ENTIRE school who doesn’t send FULL-SIZED candy bars in her child’s lunch EVERY day, I think I do okay.
I haven’t found a lot of room for variety (that my kids will actually eat), so to mix things up a little I head to the day-old bread store and use whatever they have in place of regular sandwich bread. Putting a sandwich on English muffins or bagels is a nice change and makes a peanut butter sandwich a little different.
I also like to add in Wet Ones. I’ve always been a fan of Wet Ones wipes over squirty gels, since it just seems more logical to wipe germs off than to spread them around. They’re also more effective for cleaning up sticky hands and faces and easier for kids to use on their own. I generally carry around a purse pack of them, but the individually packaged ones are perfect to throw into a school lunch.
And with a permanent marker, they’re a great place to write those (exciting to a 6yo/embarrassing to a 10yo) love notes from mom!
What are your best tricks for making kids’ lunches?
I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Wet Ones. I received a product sample to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.
I let them buy!! But I seriously want to start packing so I know what they are eating and that they are getting more nutrition. I love the Wet Ones tip!
I let mine buy once a week, and they study the calendar carefully to choose the best day. (i.e. pizza)
Our district has free breakfast and lunch for all students, so I don’t send lunch very often. Really makes mornings easier.
My sons favorite was small bagels with a container of pizza sauce and cheese . I know they make them in lunchables but homemade ones were more fun and less costly . I tried to sneak in a vegetable like carrots with ranch dip but who was i kidding that got trashed , so i just choose my battles and knew for dinner at home they would get there vegetables .Then also they choose the school menu first and if they didnt like it thats the day to take one from home 🙂
I tried the pizza lunchables at the waterpark today, and I can guarantee you now that small bagels taste better!
After watching “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” I am honestly quite disgusted by what they’re feeding our kids in schools (and I’m NOT one of those holier-than-thou people who will never allow my child pizza, candy, etc). I have no problem with some “junk” food as long as I know where it’s coming from. Making lunches is a lot of work, but I feel much better knowing where my kids’ food is coming from. I even buy chips – yes, chips! – as long as the ingredients are pototaes, oil, and salt. I don’t want the package to have ingredients that look like a foreign language. Watch the show if you haven’t already – you’ll be shocked! Anyway, all this to say, I pack my children’s lunches. My 8-year old daughter wishes she could eat at school more often (and I do permit it from time to time!), but I would much rather take the extra time to make lunch for my kiddos! ♥
potatoes* – lol! Oops. 😀
I try to pack what I can and prep the night before. I fill their bottles 1/4 with water and put it into the freezer until the morning then fill with water to the top. I try to make it a fun by using egg molds for their boiled eggs and mini veggie cutters for shaped veggies. In regards to your sandwich comment have you tried tortillas? I roll up ham, turkey, egg salad, or chicken salad in it. I also use pita bread. Sometimes I give crackers to may it seem more like a lunchable. I buy a bag of grapes and measure 1/2 cup (1 serving) out into small ziplock snack bags from the dollar store and then store it in the fridge. Easy access in the morning.
I’m going on my 3rd year of packing lunches most every day for all 3 of my kids who are still at home. They got burnt out on sandwiches and wraps last year, so this year we’re trying new things altogether. I found some great containers that have freezer packs built in, so I use the small ones for like 5-6 small cubes of cheese per child. The medium ones can hold some applesauce which I buy in big jars to save money. I freeze juice boxes to also act as freezer packs to help keep everything in the lunchbag cold. It’s usually all thawed by their lunchtimes. I also get large containers of raisins and will put those in small containers as well, or apple slices, carrot sticks etc. When they get tired of cheese cubes, I’ll get yogurt which fit right into the freezer pack containers. The trick is to not give an overwhelming amount of any one thing. For the main dishes, they’ll get medium sized containers of stuff like pasta salads, thickened taco soup, home made bean dip with a baggie of tortilla chips, garden salad with shredded chicken, cranberries and mandarin oranges. Dressing can be put in a small leakproof container or poured on the salad before packing. For sweets, we spend one weekend afternoon together baking a bunch of big cookies, and I pack one into each lunchbag daily. So far I’ve had very little come back home uneaten.
“Usually thawed by lunchtime”
I’m pretty sure that’s what my own mother thought, but it never was and I always hated having to suck so hard on my drink to get any out! Not sure why I never told her that . . .
Hopefully, your kids tell would tell you!
I have looked over the menu at my son’s high school and the lunches actually look pretty nutritious. There is also quite a variety to choose from. However, my son does not want to buy lunch. I think he does not want to waste his time standing in line.
Last year when he was a freshman (we had been homeschooling, so this hadn’t come up before), I packed a lunch with a sandwich, carrot sticks, grapes, etc. At the end of the day, I found that the only thing he ate was the sandwich. So, after several days of this, I gave up. He now takes 2 sandwiches, and that’s it. No drink, no dessert. He’s in high school, so I think he can make his own decisions on this.
This is how it works at our house. He now makes his own lunches for the week on Sunday. I buy him rolls, deli meat and cheese. He puts together 10 sandwiches, puts them in pairs into Ziplock bags and freezes them. He takes them out of the freezer in the morning and by lunch time they have thawed.
I like the idea of wraps, so I may have him try those periodically and see how he likes it.
Sarah
Love the wet ones idea!! I’ll be using that:))
Funny – I am ALSO the ONLY mother in the WHOLE-ENTIRE school who doesn’t pack full size candy bars!! LOL
Well now we can each tell our kids there’s ONE other mother out there in the world who deprives her children!
The Wet Ones are a great idea! I have a rotating list of 20 different lunches (enough to get through a normal month), and prep everything on Sundays. When it comes to sandwiches, I put the bread in one container, the fillings in another, and then toss in little condiment packages so he can put the sandwich together at school and it won’t get soggy.
A rotating list! Wow, impressive!
My kids are in college now and my nest is empty but I still miss those days of packing their school lunches. This post brought back happy memories! And I always thought I was doing a good thing packing the Wet Ones but I discovered at the end of each day when I would be cleaning out their lunch boxes to pack them for the next day, the Wet Ones were always still in their lunch boxes…. unopened and therefore unused. I never could get them to use them! I’m just hoping they washed their hands at some point before they ate!
It’s back to the routine for me, as well. As I teach at the Christian school where my kids attend, I have to pack for myself, too. I get sooo burned out on the typical lunch stuff, and do not want to spend $ on all kinds of prepackaged goodies.
I find that my kids’ favorite lunch is the previous night’s supper leftovers. I try to cook enough extra to make 4 lunch trays for them and if there is any left, I take some. I do feel that it is important for our kids to be made to eat at least one fruit or veggie (preferably fresh) at lunch. Their physical well being is my responsibility.
I hope others will join this conversation to help me out with extra ideas! 🙂
I am probably the world’s meanest mom, but I made my kids start packing their own snacks/lunches in preschool. They went to private school, so buying hot lunch was not an option. My son loves cold bean/cheese burritos, and both of my kids figured out that it was really easy to grab the cut veggies that I always keep in the fridge. I thought cucumbers had to be neatly sliced, but they prefer cutting them once, and sticking half in a baggie to be eaten like an apple. By putting the kids in control, it seems that we had very little waste over the years. (Well, there was that one year that my daughter took an orange and by the time we found it in August, it was garbage, along with her lunchbox…)
I have had other parents come to me and comment that my kids’ lunches are so healthy, and ask how I get my kids to eat like that? I try to keep healthy foods as the “easy” choice, (I don’t tell them they can’t have Cheetos, I just don’t feel obligated to provide them. If they want to walk to the store, and spend their hard earned money that is fine, because it helps to assure that those types of things are truly an occasional treat.) By this point (son is now in public HS where hot lunch is an option, and daughter just graduated from private school) they are creatures of habit and still make lunch, whether for school or work. I am still in the habit of making sure there are grab-and-go choices: washed produce, healthy yogurt, individual or string cheese, almonds, a stash of homemade burritos, hummus, refried beans, and of course, I always make extra dinner if it is something that can be eaten cold, taken in a thermos, or otherwise used to save me from having to cook another meal and clean up afterwards!
I am most definitely not holier-than-thou, I am just really lazier-than-thou!