Getting your kids excited about eating a healthy lunch can be a real challenge. While it’s much easier to just throw together a lunch box filled with store bought, processed foods and snacks, it’s not the healthiest option. I’ve teamed up with Niagara water to bring you a few simple tips for packing a healthy lunch that your kids will actually eat!
Always pack water to drink.
Packing Niagara water daily instead of sugary drinks and juices will help your kids start a healthy habit of drinking water with lunch for years to come.
Make their lunch into a meal kit.
Kids love anything that they can put together, so make them something that they can have fun assembling at lunch time, like chicken tacos. Just add their favorite ingredients to a lunch container and let them have fun building their lunch! They can get creative and help you pick out which toppings they like. A few ideas for meal kits are…
Build Your Own Tacos – Add their choice of meat, veggies, cheese, salsa and/or guacamole and tortillas to the kit.
Build Your Own Pizza Roll-ups – Add pepperoni, salami or sausage, cheese, pizza sauce and tortillas to the kit.
Build Your Own Salad – Add lettuce, deli meats or chicken, cheese, croutons and veggies along with their choice of dressing to the kit.
Let them help you make a menu.
Letting your kids help plan what they are going to have for lunch ahead of time will make them feel involved in the process, and will give them something to look forward to each day. It’s fun for them to try to pick items that they like to have together, and they can even help you with the grocery shopping!
Cut sandwiches into fun shapes.
Take sandwiches from boring and dull to exciting by using a sandwich cutter to kick it up a notch! My daughter is a little older now, so we have graduated from star and heart shaped sandwiches to pocket sandwiches. You can use cookie cutters to make fun shapes or a biscuit cutter to make circles. How fun is that?
Pack lunches in divided containers.
A colorful, divided container just makes lunches more fun! To make these containers even more fun, let your kiddos decorate them with stickers or permanent markers. They will love opening each container and section to see what’s inside!
Hopefully these tips will help you and your kids make lunchtime more fun for years to come! Got any tips that you would like to share? Leave them HERE on Niagara’s Facebook page, and you might win $100!
[…] the past few weeks, I have shared Tips for Starting the School Day Off Right and Tips for Packing a Healthy Lunch That Your Kids Will Actually Eat, and today I want to talk about school lunches and how you can teach your kids to pack their own! […]