Many things about the upcoming school year will look different this fall, but the need for well-balanced lunches for the kids remains the same as years past. Whether packing lunches to send to school or making lunches for remote learning, our kids will still be looking to us to create fun, well-balanced meals. This fall, chances are good that my daughter will be staying home with me rather than returning to school. Since I will still be working full time, I plan to do lunchtime prepping to make it easy on myself and provide some lunchtime entertainment for her to keep things light and fun.
A fun, well-balanced lunch includes a veggie, a protein, a fruit, water, dairy, and a snack. Check out this "Craft a Lunch" refrigerator sheet. It's a great tool for teaching the kids, and serves as a great reminder for you, too. This week I made a quick trip to Target to shop for lunch necessities, NABISCO Multipack Snacks and Danimals® Smoothies, to craft a ton of fun and exciting lunches for my kiddo.
On this Target run, I turned to Danimals® Smoothies for quick and easy dairy options, and to NABISCO Multipacks for the variety of snack options. I always check out Circle Offers in the Target App for savings! August 10th-September 7th you can get 10% off NABISCO Multipack Snacks with Circle in the Target App. I chose the 20 count NABISCO Multipack, but they have a ton of different varieties to choose from on the shelf in the snack packs section.
You can find Danimals® Smoothies. in the refrigerated section. Kids love the taste of these smoothies, and while they’re great for lunches, they also make for a nutritious snack. They're 10% off using Circle in the Target App from August 23rd-29th, and September 6th-12th!
Target was out the first time I visited, but a few days later I also picked up a 12 pack of Horizon® Organic Single Serve Milk Boxes. These will be great on the go, for days we decide to do a picnic lunch. FYI, at Target these are not located in the refrigerated section, but rather near the juice boxes and other lunchbox items. You can get 10% using Circle in the Target App from August 9th-September 9th, and 15% off September 10th-19th! I also picked up a few varieties of deli meat, bread, fruits, and vegetables to round out the lunches.
Back home, I popped onto the Danimals website where I found several adorable lunch ideas. I decided to help my daughter make a version of one of the ideas, a flower theme! This lunch included a ham and whole-wheat bread sandwich, cut into the shape of a flower. Then, we cut flowers out of watermelon, adding grapes as the centers, and celery and spinach as the stems and leaves. Then we added a Danimals® Smoothie and NABISCO Snack to round it out for a fun lunch! You could also use a Horizon® Organic Single Serve Milk Box instead of the Danimals® Smoothies. This took us maybe 10 minutes to put together, and my daughter was so excited to actively participate in crafting her own lunch! There are a million creative lunchbox ideas out there, so start by trying a few of the ones listed on the Danimals website, or even create your own.
Here we are, all set and ready to make a fun flower themed lunch!
Here are all the ingredients we worked from to craft this lunch:
My daughter needed a little help, but not much! She loved using the cookie cutters on the different textures, and adding the food flowers to her plate.
After cutting flowers, she added celery sticks as flower stems, and spinach as leaves.
Here's the finished lunch! The only thing not pictured is her glass of water. Don't forget to add water to your kids lunches, it's an important part to a well-balanced lunch!
If crafting a themed lunch isn’t realistic for you, there are so many other ways you can make lunchtime fun. You can draw funny faces on sandwich bags, or write silly jokes on pieces of paper to tuck in with lunches each day. These things can be done in advance, all at once. Grab a box of baggies and spend 15 minutes drawing faces on them. Then, tuck them away to use over the course of a few weeks. Or, hop online and get a list of short jokes for kids, and write them on slips of paper one evening while watching TV. Then you’ll have a whole stash ready to go.
These little things will make our kids smile, and during a school year which will surely bring challenges and tough days, this is more important than ever. If you decide to take the leap and craft a fun lunch, I’d love to see what you come up with, so send me a photo or post it and tag us on Instagram!
Macaroni Kid is proud to partner with NABISCO and Danimals for this campaign. All opinions are my own.
