How To Start Meal Planning for Healthy School Lunches

Are you ready to feel like a super mom this fall? Meal prepping and planning healthy, homemade food for your kids school lunches is a great way to start the year off right. At least we can start the year off right, right? I’m not promising anything after a few months 😉

Meal planning lunches gives you the opportunity to plan so it’s not the morning before they go off to school and you are throwing in a bag of chips and a store bought cookie because you didn’t plan ahead (trust me, I have been in that position many a time over the last 14 years of making kids school lunches.

Lunchtime is the best opportunity for your child to receive the fuel they need to continue their learning for the rest of the day. As wise homesteading parents, we should all ensure that the fuel is going to actually help their focus and develop their brains rather than just keep them wired with sugar and feeling full. These meal planning tips and ideas will help ensure that your kids are kept full and given a good dose of healthy foods. 

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Meal Planning Containers and Accessories

To start with, you will need to get some containers and accessories that you can use for planning your kids’ lunches. Start with the lunch boxes, which should preferably have multiple compartments kind of Bento box style or Tiffins. This makes it much easier to plan ahead and make sure they have healthy meals within the different important food groups.

Plus, isn’t it just fun having a bunch of different foods and flavours in different compartments?

Also, don’t forget some fun shaped ice packs that will help things like yoghurt and sandwiches with meat and mayo and cheese stay cool till lunch time.

However, if your son really wants to use his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch box, then you will need small individual containers that fit inside the lunch box in order to put his different lunch items inside. Some other containers you might need are small mason jars, snack-size reusable bags, and larger containers for the prepped ingredients.

What Foods You Can Plan Ahead

Once you have all of your meal prepping containers, you can then plan certain things ahead of time. While not all components for the lunches will be done before you actually prepare the lunches, there are many things you can do ahead of time.

Making up the different components over the weekend or in the evening before can really help to save time on busy mornings. Some things you are able to do ahead of time include boiling eggs, chopping fruit and vegetables, and putting items like granola, trail mix, and pretzels into portion-control containers or baggies.

Prep Lunches Before the School Week Starts

Once you have started planning out their lunches for the week, you can then start thinking about when to put them together. Do your chopping, weighing, and measuring on the weekend, and you won’t have to worry about their lunches each morning or the evening before.

Many food items for kids can last in the fridge for several days, so with more containers, you are able to do a little more prep work.

Save These Preps For the Night or Morning Before School

There are other things that you should wait before you start prepping.

The following are some food items and ingredients that you should not just prep and plan until either the night before school, or early on the morning before school.

For example, if you are making a sandwich that includes luncheon meat, cheese, and veggies in bread, you should not be putting it together and keeping it wrapped for days at a time. It won’t stay fresh and the ingredients can cause the bread to get soggy. This is something you should leave for the last minute.

This also goes for crackers, fruit or veggies that have juice, salads, and a variety of similar foods.

Ideas for Main Dish and Sides

There is no reason your kids’ lunches need to be complicated or time consuming. Just start with one main dish for the bulk of the lunch (usually including protein), and have a couple of healthy sides. In fact, many of the compartment boxes for kids lunches, like Bento boxes, have room for one bigger item, then smaller compartments for other items. 

Some main dish ideas:

Sandwiches (PB&J, chicken salad, tuna salad, egg salad..)

Leftovers from dinner the night before (if you have a leftover roast chicken, you can make homemade chicken salad sandwiches) and pasta or potato salads are very good the next day (Broccoli and Bowties ~ Pasta Salad Recipe, Creamy Red Potato Salad with Fresh Herbs, Orzo Pasta Salad with Tomatoes and Capers are all great in lunch boxes the next day)

Wrap with either a tortilla or lettuce

Meat like chicken breast or turkey roll-ups

For the healthy sides, there are many options, but here are some that are easy to prep and put into the kids’ lunches:

Veggies – raw broccoli, carrot sticks, celery (with homemade dips like White Bean Dip with Seasoned Pita Chips )

Fruit – grapes, pineapple, cut up peaches or pears

Cheese cubes or string cheese 

yoghurt and homemade granola (or try our Strawberry-Banana Granola Parfaits!)

Whole grain crackers with cheese or peanut butter

Fruit and nut butter

My Favourite Cookbooks for Healthy Lunch Meal Planning:

There are a few resources I go to over and over again for recipes and inspiration for meal planning healthy homemade lunches including several cookbooks. 

• Damn Delicious Meal Prep: 115 Recipes for Low Calorie, High Energy Living
• The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You can stop buying and start making
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Have the Kids Help Out With Their School Lunches!

Want your kids to eat their healthy lunch? Let them help! This not only takes some of the work off your shoulders and teaches your kids how to prepare their own food, but it makes it more exciting when they go to eat their lunch. They helped put it together with foods they enjoy, so they are much more likely to eat the nutritious options.

Meal prepping and planning is a fantastic idea for making sure your kids have healthy lunches this school year. Take it from this mama of 3 who has been doing this for 14 years and counting!

Check Out These Related Posts for More Lunch Meal Planning Ideas:

• Wraps Kids Love in their School Lunches
• Heart Healthy Lunch Ideas For Everyone
• 8 Best Books and Blogs for Inspired School Lunches
• 5 Healthy Grab-and-Go Breakfast Ideas for Busy Mornings
• Broccoli and Bowties ~ Pasta Salad Recipe
• Chocolate Oat Cookies (or as my family calls them, Bear Plop cookies)

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