The first few weeks of school are always exciting. You and your child have carefully selected a new lunchbox or bag, maybe you are super cool and invested in some kid friendly Bento Boxes, or maybe you even have a fresh pack of brown bags just waiting to be filled. You have probably stocked up on healthy snacks and goodies. But, how soon into those first few weeks do we realize there we have “lunch box burn out”? You know that feeling when your child’s lunch comes home practically untouched and spoiled and all you can do is throw that cut up turkey and cheese in the garbage.
The key to avoiding the burn out is to try and switch it up, and make lunch fun again. Now this doesn’t have to mean spending hours making gourmet sandwiches… But add a little playfulness and with a little luck your child may actually have the lunch that all the other kids want to trade for!
The Kids in the Kitchen website is a great resource for fun and healthy recipes.
Here are some other fun ideas:
Grab some of your seasonal or non-seasonal cookie cutters (who doesn’t like a Christmas tree in October?) use them to cut out cheese shapes or cut a shape into a PB and jelly, honey, or COOKIE-BUTTER sandwich (Trader Joes-it’s amazing).
You can use wooden toothpicks as skewers for veggies like a tomato, broccoli, or mushroom and give your child hummus or ranch to dip!
Also use wooden toothpicks to make mini kabobs! Cut up cheese and hotdogs or turkey and alternate on a toothpick for a super easy lunch kabob.
Also doing things like freezing a Go-gurt and always adding an ice pack help to keep those lunches cold and taste MUCH better. Would you want to eat a warm salad at lunch? I didn’t think so!
What original things do you do to keep lunches interesting?
