Any Ideas What to Take to School for Lunch

I also always incude a hershey kiss in my kid's lunches. I tell them that it is a kiss from Mom. It's a small special treat and lets them know I'm thinking of them.

Soups, stews, etc do stay hot in a good thermos - esp the ones made for such items.

We also found that just using a variety of breads helps to keep things exciting enough! Wheat breads, bagels, croissants, wraps, crackers, etc. Mine also love hard-boiled eggs and omelettes, sandwiches with fresh turkey, salami and cheese, cottage cheese with crackers, always with sides of vegetables (and sometimes dips) and fruit.

My daughter is in second grade and had either brought a peanut butter sandwich or a turkey sandwich ( with misc. fruit snacks, carrot sticks, etc.) for lunch every day since kindergarten and she's just fine. I wouldn't do anything fancy or else he'll expect that all of the time and if you're planning on having more children, you won't have time to do fancy lunches. Use dinner time to worry about more nutritional values.

Hope this helps,
T. (mother of 17,15 and 7 year old)

Peanut butter can replace meat protein. My kids love apples with peanut butter. Just cut up the apple and use fruit fresh to kepp it from turning brown. They also like celery with peanut butter (I add raisins on top for my daughter) and they use peanut butter as a dip for carrots. My son loves turkey bacon so I will send him 4 slices of it. My kids take a lunch box they chose themselves and I have the freezer conatiner to keep things cold.

There are a lot of good ideas here. Some that I have tried are cereal, peanut butter on crackers, or any other sandwich fixings. You can use tortillas, veggies and dip, and don't forget breakfast foods, like hardboiled eggs, waffles cut into strips, etc... Kudos to you on not using Lunchables! I was at a nutrition night and they showed us a lunchable that was 2 years old. It had never molded due to all of the preservatives! Yuck!

I've invested in a couple quality thermoses and the boys like to have soups, speghettios or ramen noodles in them. They state the lunch is still warm when they eat it.

Hi F.!
Just this morning on the Today Show on NBC they had ideas for school lunches and how to store them. They said they would put it on their website so you might want to take a look when you get a minute.

Wow--I am surprised no one said my standby--cheese sticks. Our girls love both string cheese and colby cheese sticks. Another fave for us is pudding. Today my daughter had cheese sticks, square pretzels, apple slices, pudding and a couple of mini cookies. I also send yogurt and include a little bag with sprinkles she can add to it. Yogurt drinks are good too as are frozen go-gurts (they get slushy by lunch). A fun idea which I've done a few times is to send jello jigglers made with pomegranet (sp??) or other juice. I make them in fun shapes--the kids think those are awesome. The ones I sent one time came out kinda purpleish black and one kid at my daughter's school thought she was eating a poison snack since he'd only seen red jigglers before! Spaghettios is a big hit too--my kids like them room temp so I just put them in container with a screw top. Try to keep things fun. The other day I threw in a few pieces of pepperoni with her cheese and my husnband always packs pickles. I also send containers with veggies--carrots, canned green beans or a finger salad.

My daughter is in 2nd grade and has had to take her lunch every day because she is diabetic. We have packed things such as lunchables, PB&J, and all types of lunch meat sandwiches. We also pack in addition another item such as packaged rice krispie squares, granola bars, chips, fruit that she likes, licorice, and gold fish. For her drink, we have found the Koolaid packs, just like the Capri Sun, but these have less carbs. We have an insulated lunch bag and depending on what we put in, we add an extra cold pack. She never complains about something not being cold. We make sure that she picks out what she wants each night so that way there is not fighting the next morning trying to figure out what she wants. Hope this helps.

Hi. I send leftovers from dinner. I have a couple of thermos and everything seems to stay warm until lunch. Today I sent two chicken legs and some potatoes. My daughter says everything is still warm at lunch. I have packed mac n cheese chicken nuggets, pizza, and hambugers. If something will not fit in a thermos, I just wrap it in a double layer of tin foil.

Here are just a few that i have tried for my daughter who also just startedd Kindergarten.

Flour or corn Tortilla spread lightly with garden cream cheese and put turkey, ham, roast beef, really anything you want roll up and cut. You have fun little pin wheels for them to eat. She doesn't eat that much as i overpacked the first week. I usually give her one of those a little bag of wheat thin crackers, juice box, and 1 type of fruit and vegetable (carrot sticks or cucumbers) and a little cup of yogurt.

I have also tried pizza quisadilla(spelling) just put sauce and cheese between 2 tortilla shells heat until melted and it is still good at lunch time.

I work full time so it has to be easy to put together in the morning and so far these are very easy and she likes them.

they have some really yummy generic lunchable type things that are not too pricey. I always let my son pick out a couple. they freeze really well, and every here and there i will through one of those into his pack. he thinks it's really cool. we mostly do sandwiches, sometimes pizza or chicken nuggets. my guy loves sandwiches, he gets to make his own pb&j, so he is always really happy about his lunch.