Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Lunch help, please!
Next week begins a new stage in our little family. Weston begins 1st grade. I am all good with him being at school all day--of course I will miss him... But the thing I am most worried about is LUNCH. What do I make him? I don't want him to eat at the school every day (maybe one to two times a week...). But I need some ideas for lunches. Do you send juices every day? What else can you send? How do you send it? How do things stay cold? Help me all of you EXPERIENCED parents!
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7 comments:
i don't have much experience with this... only full-day preschool that my kids did in TN. But I found that if i put the sandwich in a little plastic bin and put a ice cooler thing in, the sandwich still got soggy. I think we ended up not putting the ice cooler thing in and only put things in that would last without staying frigid. Oh - Hannah just said we used to do crackers and cheese (with the cooler thingie). She also said we used to send a little water bottle. I guess I sent some Propel drink packet for her to pour in. Wow that was nice of me... I would just send water now. If you do apples just sprinkle fruit fresh on them and they won't turn brown. Anyhoo... probably not very helpful advice. I've been wondering what I'll do this year about lunches for Hannah. Let me know how it goes and what things work for you.
I don't have experience with my own kids but when I taught school I saw a lot of school lunches. Here are a few ideas:
A lot of lunch boxes come with a little container that you can freeze at night and put in the box in the morning. It should keep the lunch cool.
Here are a few ideas:
Sandwiches, peanut butter or soy butter and crackers or carrot sticks, celery sticks, or apple slices to dip, juice drinks, yogurt drinks or packaged yogurt smoothies, yogurt or gogurt, fresh fruit, raisins, craisins, pickles, lunchables (it is cheaper to make it yourself with small pieces of meat, cheese and crackers), string cheese, vienna sausages, pudding cups and Jell-O cups (or make your own in a little tupperware container), a bag of cereal to mix with yogurt -like a parfait, pretzels, wheat thins, and a treat. Hope that list helps a little. Too bad the kids don't have a microwave.
Congrats on your Kindergarten graduate!!
good advice so far! Our school rotates lunch schedules, and the youngest eat first, so their lunch only had to stay cold until about 10:50. My kids never complained about warm capri suns, either. Which, by the way, capri sun makes a "water" version of their drinks, that is more like a propel or something along those lines. Also, you might try pricing out the school lunch option. Here, at least, it's almost more economical to have my kids eat at school than to buy all those chips/snacks/drinks, etc. that a home lunch requires.(which are also the items that the boys tend to get into after school or on the weekends...making them go faster!) We send a lunch box on the days that the school has something my boys don't like. Good luck!
I don't think my advice is any different...but they do sell little freezer packs at Target in the lunch bag/thermos section. They have different shaped ones like spiderman and stuff that are tiny and fit easily in to their lunch bag. I just refreeze them each night. They are great for keeping lunch meat sandwiches cool. You can also get small thermoses to send speghettio's and mac and cheese, or soup on cold days. There are tons of snack packs (crackers/snacky stuff) that they sell in bulk for lunches. I too, always send a water bottle with the kids to school, as well as a Capri-sun in their lunch bag for lunch. After a few days I am sure he will tell you what he wants, because it usually has a lot to do with what his friends are bringing! ;)
sis tingey did an awesome lesson on this! i bet she can hook you up! he kids eat better at school than mine do at home.
ps-wednesday is always pizza day and parker loves it. so if wes is a pizza lover, that is a hot lunch day!
You make me laugh. I never put stuff in to keep it cold and my kids never complain. They pretty much take a sandwich, chips/crackers,fruit, dessert, and capri sun. It is easy. Sometimes I will make macaroni and cheese or soup and put it in a thermos mug, but only if I am not running behind. I know you and will do great.
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