Back-to-School Lunchbox Inspiration
Today was the first day of school and I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for my kid. By the end of the year I will have made 200-some odd peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I know, it’s crazy our school still lets us send peanut butter and don’t remind me of the possibility they’ll ban peanut products eventually. Because at that point I’ll be picking up my kid at school and bringing her home for lunch. Every. Single. Day.
My hope had always been that making interesting lunches for my picky eater would encourage her to eat a wider variety of things. What appears to happen is a lot of food ends up in the garbage. Still, our options have slowly grown over the years.
Easy Lunch Ideas for Picky Kids
It feels like every article I read about getting picky eaters to try more things recommends getting your kid involved in planning her own lunch. This sounds lovely in practice and if I were a better mother I’d have both of my kids making their own lunches and I’d never yell in the morning or race them out the door with two minutes to spare. But it never seems to work that way at my house.
Instead, I made a magnetic lunch chart last year so the kids could pick and choose what things they’d like packed in their lunch — without letting the choices devolve into a bag full of pudding, cookies and a side of potato chips. My favorite lunch to send with the kids is a super simplified bento box. Just some fruit, cheese, crackers and peanut butter. Add a cookie for dessert and you’re done.
If you want to do something fancier, Flickr is a good source of bento box inspiration. I wish I loved my kids enough to make really amazing lunches, like these from Lunch in a Box. But apparently I don’t love them like that. But maybe I’ll try packing pancakes into their lunches once in a while. We’ll see.
The Kid Eats Flickr group is another excellent source for school lunch inspiration. Some of the lunches are a little too involved for me to pull off so early in the morning (or ever) but a lot of the ideas these parents come up with would be great fun to surprise your kid with. Like this hilarious apple.
Do you have any fabulous lunch ideas that work for your kids? Do your kids get bored if they’ve got the same thing in their lunchbox week after week?
More Lunchbox Ideas for Kids:
- Why I Make My Kids Pack Their Own Lunches
- Homemade Granola Bars and Wrappers
- DIY Lunchbox Napkins for Back-to-School
Photo source: Depositphotos/belchonok
