Preparing and packing school lunches for children is not child’s play. A parent needs to take care of many things while preparing and packing school lunches for their children. There might be dietary restrictions, food allergies, and budget constraints that you need to consider before deciding what to pack for your children.
Parents around the world get up early to prepare and pack school lunch for their children, but most of the time, the child either does not finish his/her lunch or trades it with one of their buddies, while eating junk food themselves.
In this article, let us discuss a few things that a parent can do to improve the odds of their child eating their school lunch.
Get your kids involved
Getting your kids involved, is one of the most essential steps, depending on their age, you can engage them in different stages of preparing and packing their school lunch. From taking suggestions on what they want, to making them prepare and pack their lunch can go a long way in them finishing their school lunch.
1. No matter what their age group, the easiest thing to do is to take suggestions from them on what they want to eat at school for lunch. You don’t need to get and prepare everything they want, but including a fewof their choices can make their school lunch experience much better.
2. Prepare a menu for the entire week; don’t pack the same lunch for them every day. Even if it is something they like, they are going to get bored with it and either stop finishing their lunch or start trading it with other kids.
3. Once a week, get your child to pack his/her lunch, you can prepare their lunch, and then supervise them while they pack it themselves. This task will help them appreciate the efforts you put in day in and day out.
4. For the older kids, get them to prepare and pack their lunch once a while. It will not only teach them how to be self-reliable but also help them understand the daily efforts you put in to keep them healthy and full during school.
Healthy, but also tasty
We all want our children to get healthy, and this is very important as well. So we need to make sure what we give them to eat at home or school is healthy. However, we also need to understand that if they do not like what is packed for them, they are less likely to eat it.
You need to get creative; there are tons of healthy and tasty recipes available that you can use to prepare healthy meals that your child would find delicious as well.
Lunch box hygiene
Ok, so now you prepare healthy meals that your child enjoys and finishes every day. Is your job done? Not quite. You still need to make sure that the lunch box you use to pack their school lunch is hygienic and clean. You need to make sure that it is spill-free, has enough space, is BPA free, and it has to look good as well, especially if you have a young child that uses it.
After you have bought a good lunch box, you still need to make sure it cleaned every day after school. The best practice is to wash the lunch box as soon as your child returns home from school. Another exercise is to have at least one spare school lunch box at home so that it’s there in case you need to use it.
Scoobies is an excellent place to buy school lunch boxes that are not only attractive to look at but also are safe and healthy. We have a large collection of lunch boxes that are practical, affordable, and BPA free. You can look at our collection of lunch boxes and choose the best ones for your little ones.
Add notes to their lunch boxes
A practice that was followed in my house was my mom added small personal notes to my school lunch. She would write something positive or funny messages, or sometimes she would just write “mom loves you” and pack it along with my lunch. I do this for my kids, and you can do this for your children as well, not only does this make the child want to open their lunch box to read this personal message, it also helps them when they have a tough day at school.
As a parent, we all want the best for our kids; following these few steps, we can get our children to eat their healthy school lunch every day. All it takes is a bit of effort, creativity, love,and Scoobies.