5 Tips for How to Create a Packed Lunch for Kids

We make a lot of lunches in our house.

My daughters go to a charter school that doesn’t have a lunch program. There’s no lunchroom or food service. Parents are responsible for sending a lunch each day or for ordering delivery food from a small number of approved local restaurants. 

Since the food delivery is so expensive and unhealthy for kids’ school lunches, we pack lunch every day.

Since we’ve made and packed so many meals over the last few years, and since we have a very picky toddler eating at home, we have to be creative. We’ve found a few fun ways to get our kids more excited about eating their lunches.

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5 Tips for How to Create a Packed Lunch for Kids

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1. Make it Silly ~ The kids always love it when we make funny faces and creatures out of the food. I’ll make a smiley face with sandwich toppings or make the condiments into an animal drawing.

2. Make it Creative ~ Our kids love being able to put items together themselves. Instead of a packed salad, we’ll give them a container of lettuce and several smaller containers with dressing, veggies and croutons. They all love creating their own salad to eat for lunch.

3. Make it Fun ~ The kids always love fun shapes instead of the typical ones. I’ll cut their sandwiches with cookie cutters so the girls have heart-shaped or castle-shaped sandwiches. They love it!

4. Make it Yummy ~ Since I’m the one packing the lunches and choosing the foods, I usually try to include one of the kids’ favorite foods. Whether it’s a special treat or their favorite fruit, they love seeing something they know they’ll enjoy in their lunchbox.

5. Make it Sweet ~ I love to leave little notes for the kids in their lunches from time to time. I’ll send encouragement if they have a stressful afternoon ahead or just send a funny drawing or note telling them how special they are.

This was a lunch we packed yesterday for a picnic on a hike we were taking. Some great healthy favorites and a lunch I knew the kids would love:

Fruit Shoot drinks are naturally flavored fruit drinks that the kids love in their lunches. It has a great fruit taste but has no high fructose corn syrup or added sugar, so I can feel better about giving them to my kids. The innovative no-spill cap is perfect for our toddler who spills on a daily basis, and it’s great for lunchboxes that might get tipped over at school. With awesome flavors like Berry Burst, Strawberry/Raspberry, Orange and Apple, there are lots of ways to give the kids a fun, natural fruit drink to enjoy at lunch.

Learn more about Fruit Shoot natural fruit drinks.

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Right now, with your purchase of Fruit Shoot, there is the option for a free download of an Angry Birds game! Just download the Angry Birds game and enter the code on the back of your Fruit Shoot bottle to play.

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Find Fruit Shoot drinks at your local retailer: 

Walmart, KMart, Kroger, Lowes Foods, Harris Teeter, Dollar General, Family Dollar, Spartan, Speedway, Meijer Gas, Sheetz, Kangaroo, WilcoHess, Handee Hugo, Family Fare, Giant Eagles, Marc’s, Dave’s, UDF, Traxx, Redi Mart, J Clarks

This is a compensated campaign with Robinson’s Fruitshoot. All opinions are my own.