As I plan for my four oldest to go back to school, I’ve dug out all of my SCHOOL LUNCH IDEA faves for you. I have these printed off and placed in a separate tabbed catagory in my MEAL PLANNING FOLDER shown below (view tutorial HERE):
Main Dish:
California Wrappers
Cucumber Tuna Boats
Taco Roll Ups
Calzone Pockets
Curry Tuna Fish Sandwiches – Instead of putting this on bread, I put it in a small reusable container and give the kids crackers to make their own mini sandwiches. They love it!
Peanut Raspberry Pita – You can substitute strawberries (or most any fruit) for the raspberry. Especially good with crunchy peanut butter!
Peanut Butter Crunch Wraps
Make your own pizza kits with thin French bread slices
Sticky mouth sandwiches
Crazy Cookie Cutter sandwich
Chicken bacon pitas – no recipe – just chicken, bacon, lettuce and mayo.
Fluffer Nutter sandwich
Ham Pinwheels
Grilled Chicken Wrap – Easily done when part of your ONCE A MONTH COOKING involves grilling chicken breast, slicing and freezing. Just place in the refrigerator the night before, and add whatever you have on hand: cheese, lettuce, salad dressing, etc.
Taco Pita – I use snack size bags to hold the toppings and put the meat in a sm. thermos.
Ham & Cheese Bagel Sandwich
Turkey BLT’s
Pita Chicken Sandwiches – I sub mayo for yogurt
Sandwich on a stick
Bagel/cream cheese – and so they get their protein, I include an apple with some peanut butter for dip. They love it.
Special Treats:
Blueberry Bars
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread
Fruit & fruit dip – (1/4 c. powdered sugar, 8 oz pkg cream cheese, 1 reg size container whipped cream)
Cookie Dough brownies
Apple slices & caramel dip
Popcorn balls
Cookie On A Stick – Use your favorite cookie recipe along with Wilton Candy Sticks. After cookies are cooled, wrap in cellophane and add a cute bow.
Apple Cake – keeps well in the lunchbox
If you’d like to add these recipes to your Menu Plan folder, I’ve created the main dish recipes as printable pages below:
School Lunch Recipes
Posted in: Meal Planning
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I have a 25% off coupon that I don't need. would be willing to email it to anyone who could use it.
meghitt01 at gmail dot com
Wow! Thank you!
Awesome post!! Thanks for all the great lunch ideas!!
Ugh! long night. I posted this in the wrong place. I've got a 25% off Old Navy coupon. will post it under the correct post now
Thanks Lori! This is great!
I'd like to have that dedication. My son just started kindergarten and I was wondering, the moms that make lunch for their children is because they want them to eat more healthy or lunch at school is not an option.
Liliana – just so you know, I don't make this stuff every day. One or two days out of the week they get a fun surprise. The rest of the time they have the typical brown bag stuff.
I'd love to say I have great lofty reasons for packing their lunch. Like I'm a superhealthy supermom…But the truth is, school lunches are over $2 per day or $10/wk/kid. It's much cheaper to pack a lunch. Even on days where they get the good stuff. Oh and my kids are a wee bit on the picky side (must've inherited that from their dad – LOL) so most school lunches would go largely uneaten!
I was thinking what is cheaper but $2 for an entree, milk and fruit, doensn't seem cheaper comparing to homemade lunch. Just the milk will be $1.
I think the same happen with my son, there must be many uneaten lunches, that it may be better for me, to prepare his lunch once in a while…
Yeah, that's what I thought at first too. But when you break it down into serving sizes brown baggin is much cheaper. Example: flatbread pkg 10 count $1.99 so $.20 per serving. Deli turkey $3.99/lb (about 20 slices), using two equals $.40. Individual size milk about $.40 from school. Less if in thermos from home. Homemade or store bought cookies about $.10 ea, chips about $.10 per baggie and veggies or fruit – since they only eat 3-4 of them it is $.10-$.40 depending. So on the days when they get the "special" lunch it will be $1.30-$1.60. On the other 3-4 days when they get the typical "nothin' fancy" lunch it'll be under $1 =)
If you want an eye opening experience, go have lunch with your child at school. I did this when my girls were in grade school and it certainly made me realize that most of what is served on the school lunch trays is thrown away (especially if the kids are given extra snack money to purchase chips/ice cream). I made it clear with my kids (who never wanted the cafeteria lunches anyway) that snack money would only be given on their birthday. So, it was a special treat to get money to buy ice cream at school once a year.
Lori — Thanks for the ideas for spicing up the lunch box.
Joyce
Thank you for the inputs, it really seems cheaper..and yes I should go and have lunch with my son, that way I will have an idea of what is served and the portions.
I tried to download the school lunch reicpes, but Scribd won’t let me. Is there another way I could get these other than going to ach indifidual link? Thank you, this is a great post.
Hi Barb – you can try getting it from Google Docs
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JSx0by37AZakJa82K2A-nWBCLuf0C2A5aqcK_SP3hbw/edit?hl=en_US
Thank you!