Mandy commented on the WFMW post that she’d like some lunch ideas for her daughter…and I was thinking the same thing! I want to know what other people send to school with their kids.
Here are some things that will make their way into Luke’s lunchbox, I’m sure:
Peanut butter and jelly or honey sandwich
Turkey/ham and cheese sandwich (I may also try doing a ham and cheese wrap, even though we usually heat them up)
Turkey/ham and cheese on crackers
String cheese
Grapes
Apples
Bananas
Carrot sticks and dip
Chips/pretzels (but, like my own mom, I’ll only give him a few!)
Yogurt
Ok, obviously I haven’t given this a lot of thought yet. These are pretty typical lunchbox items! However, Luke is pretty picky, so he’d probably reject many of my ideas.
Also, on a totally different note: can you suggest a book series or two (what’s the plural of series?) that would be good for Luke? Either books that would be good for me to read aloud to the boys, or books that he could read himself.
Filed under: audience participation, cooking, luke, school
I don’t really have any lunch suggestions – I have a hard enough time packing lunch once a week for Mother’s Day Out!! Ha!
Books – The Boxcar Children is a great series!! The first one is on my list for read alouds for Norah this year and I know that Jackson has started reading them on his own already.
I’m struggling with lunch ideas because Paige prefers things that are hot.
I might get creative and just do peanut butter and apple slices and a cheese stick, etc. etc. When I’m actually doing it, I’ll post ideas! Also, Paige is doing Junie B Jones right now, but before that we all read How to Eat Fried Worms and both kids enjoyed that one (though not a series).
You have more ideas than I do….Andrew won’t eat any fruit, thus I make fruit smoothies around here A LOT. However, can’t make him a fruit smoothie at school
One thing he loves and I don’t mind in terms of chips…..Flat Earth Baked Veggie Crisps in Farmland Cheddar flavor. They are at least a serving of veggies in chip form. Better than other chips, right?!?
Luckily, I’m only having to do this twice a week this year….b/c of part time kindergarten. I don’t know what I’ll do next year when this is every day.
Averhy is going to be in kindergarten this year, so we’ll have the same lunch dilemmas… some of her faves are Kraft cheese slices, applesauce, fruit snacks, and most of the items on your list. Good idea about the thermos – I was planning on juice boxes – so I’ll have to go find one! Books… like Paige, Averhy likes Junie B Jones, and fancy Nancy, but I’m guessing Luke wouldn’t be into those… I LOVE pretty much all of the Roald Dahl books – we’ve read The Twits and The Witches and Fantastic Mr. Fox and The BFG so far…
so, i don’t have any children that school age but i do know how to get creative with food given all of our food issues with adali over that last year. some ideas;
** pasta salad that can be sent cold with veggies he will eat and you can even use whole wheat pasta to be extra healthy.
** i’m not sure if he eats tuna salad or not but you could buy a cheap cookie cutter at the dollar store in the shape of a fish and use it to cut the bread in the shape of a fish for his tuna salad sandwich.
** another way to make sandwiches fun is to put the normal sandwich stuff in a tortilla. you could use spinach, red pepper or whole wheat tortillas (he will just think his cool mom gave him a green sandwich because you really don’t taste spinach in them) and once you have the fixens on the tortilla roll it up and cut it into fun little bite size pin wheels.
** you could have him help you make his own trail mix to add to his lunch. that way you both get to pick stuff you want in it and he might be more apt to actually eat it.
these may not be helpful but i thought i would try.
I don’t know what Luke’s reading level is but a good read-aloud series (since they really are short chapter books) is the Hank The Cow Dog series. They are funny and engaging! There are even books-on-tape(CD?) versions of these at the library so you can have them for car trips if they like them.
i’m reading the lion, the witch and the wardrobe right now to kenny (after we saw the movie). i was going to try to get tales of a fourth grade nothing next. i know i really liked it growing up.
I have sent cereal with a piece of fruit or made small sandwiches using Hawaiian Sweet Rolls for the “bun”. We also have done salads.
Right now I don’t have any profound ideas for lunch because I’ve been thinking the same thing!
As for books, Zoe just finished the chapter book series Henry and Mudge at school and she seemed to enjoy it. Also, we don’t have them yet, but I have heard great things about the Magic School Bus, Magic Tree House and Nate the Great books.
I still have your book email in my inbox!!! Bad friend.
Magic Treehouse series is a favorite around here. Also, Little House, and anything Beverly Cleary (Ramona, Henry Huggins and Ralph S. Mouse are top favorites). frog and toad are also fun. I’ll email more as they come to mind. Also, I’ll see what our homeschool curriculum does this year.
A few food suggestions: bagel and cream cheese or a cream cheese and jelly sandwich, apple with peanut butter or almond butter, grapes, blueberries, raisins, yogurt with frozen blueberries (costco) mixed in, egg salad or just a hard boiled egg, leftover pasta of any sort.
Great ideas for lunches! We are trying to come up with new ideas, too! I told Noah he could eat at school once a week, then take his lunch the other days.
Nicole, I like the idea of the reusable containers. I did this last year with their snack time, but hadn’t thought about it for lunches.
Someone mentioned fish-shaped tuna sandwiches – you could do a whole theme and include goldfish crackers. Noah likes tuna, but he prefers it on crackers instead of a sandwich…at least he finally tried it a few weeks ago and decided he liked it. That’s a start!
Parents magazine had some good ideas last fall, and I remember cutting out the article…now if I can just remember where I put it! I’ll have to get back to you and let you know what I find!
We love cheese in the lunch box, but I usually cut it up since it’s much cheaper to buy a brick of it. Spotted cheese is the favorite.
We also use a lot of turkey jerky (fairly healthy and from Whole Foods). Usually I put it together with the cheese slices. Anything to get some more protein into them!
Bananas work if they’re whole in the lunchbox and they don’t get bruised. We had to give up on these, though, since they kept getting squishy.
I love tortilla sandwiches – a little cream cheese to make things stick, and then usually turkey and shredded cheese. But I have done tortilla PBJ when we’ve run out of bread and they loved it.
Leftover pasta salad is good – a few times I added a bit of leftover chicken to it as well and then it was the main dish. My older one will eat things like this, but the younger one – PBJ or die,
Yogurt in the little cups or “squeezy yogurts” are great, but don’t even think about putting it in the Rubbermaid containers: the smell will kill you when you go to wash it out at the end of the day.
Mine will eat snap peas and red peppers, as well as carrots, especially with ranch dressing.
Apples and peanut butter.
Lots of berries in the spring, but mostly pears, grapes and apples when the weather’s cold.
We bought soup thermoses and on really cold days I’ll give them (canned) soup or even leftover dinner, if it’s a soup-y kind of thing (or pasta). At their former school they ate outside so this was a favorite in winter.
When my younger one was small he would only eat sandwiches cut with big cookie cutters. I gave in, and at least he ate. It was worth the 5 seconds of extra effort.
I try not to do crackers, chips, or granola bars – only because that is what they want the second they come home as their snack. There are only so many carbs they can consume in a day (at least with my permission, that is).
I love the idea of trail mix that you make together. If I knew my younger one would actually eat the nuts and raisins and not just pick out all the chocolate chips I would definitely use that one!
I also recommend Magic Treehouse and Magic Schoolbus books – the boys love those and they are good read-alone books. For read aloud we loved CS Lewis and Cressida Cowell’s Hiccup books (he’s a Viking boy – very funny),