Lunch Ideas for School - Elmhurst,IL

Just wanted to add a few more things to the list. My 4 year old likes:

Sandwiches = avocado, tomato, cheese, mustard on pita or flax seed bread, cream cheese & jelly, almond butter, egg salad on flat bread with green leaf lettuce and tomato.

In a thermos - Pasta with olive oil & pine nuts (served cold is good too) or spinach pasta with feta, warm rice with butter, spinach lasagna, homemade mac & cheese

Celery sticks with almond butter and raisins, trail mix, rice cakes, pita bread/carrots with hummus

We use Sunflowerseed butter (from trader Joe's) and Agave nectar sandwiches, since many of the schools here are nut-free, due to allergies. Egg sandwiches are great, even 1-2 scrambeled eggs in the patty shape with a little mayo between bread is easy and doesn't fall apart like egg salad.

We had him pick apples from our tree for a snack each morning, carrots, strawberries, blueberries and water. We found that our son did a lot of socializing at school, so sometimes he wouldn't eat that much, but he defintely got to finish whatever he didn't eat, after school.

What do you normally feed him? You can always send nearly anything to school.

We don't do anything soy, as it is a phytoestrogen and they are already getting exposed to xenoestrogens in our environment, so I keep that out of their diets as much as possible.

Go to weelicious.com she has amazing recipes for kids. She actually has a whole file with pics of her son's school lunches. Good luck!

Some things my kids like
cream cheese and jelly sandwiches
rice balls (I use a rice mold like this - you can find them in some Asian grocery stores http://www.amazon.com/Sushi-Mold-Rice-Maker-Shapes/dp/B00...)
hummus and veggies/pita bread triangles
leftover pasta with olive oil and parmesan in a thermos

and for ideas (way too much work for me to try personally- not vegetarian but plenty of non-meat ideas) try sites like http://wendolonia.com/blog/2010/06/04/the-week-in-bento-j...

I'm not a vegetarian, nor do I have kids in school, but I saw these "sushi-looking" sandwiches that looked adorable. I bet you could take the turkey out and substitute it with something else - some hummus maybe? http://www.rachaelray.com/recipe.php?recipe_id=641

If my kiddo was in school, and a vegetarian, I'd probably try to give foods that keep COLD instead, since I think it's easier to keep things cold than hot:
- veggies with ranch dip
- lentil salad
- hummus & pita/chips/veggie
- pasta salad
- yogurt
- hard boiled egg (is stinky, so hopefully the other kids won't back away from him thinking he's the stinky kid)
- string cheese
- pickles
- chips
- rice of some sort? I don't know. Never eaten rice cold
- pb&jelly sandwich
- if you don't make those sushi-looking sandwiches, even rolling out the bread flat and smearing something on them (like pb&j), rolling them back up looks just adorable and would make for something better than a boring old sandwich that everyone has.

Good luck. Seems thereare a lot of recipe websites out there too for "vegetarian lunches to go for kids." This one looked good: http://vegkitchen.com/kid-friendly-recipes/school-lunch-r...

Yes the funtainers (thermos containers) work great! My daughter has been using hers for a couple of years now and still function great! The tip is you need a bit of hot water in there to warm it up for like 5 minutes before you put the mac n cheese in then it will still be hot after 4 hours. My daughter said sometimes it's even a bit too hot. Our problem is she's grown in her appetite so not sure if that little funtainer will be able to fill her tummy!