Tips for Elementary School Lunches
Some days, it can feel like a fight to get the kids up, dressed, and out the door in time for school, let alone make sure that they have a healthy lunch to take with them. Little ones are often the fussiest eaters, yet elementary school-aged children must have as healthy lunch as older children do, with enough nutrients and food diversity to get them through the day. But with so much going on, and often a battle to get them to eat anything at all, let alone off to school every day, how can we as parents ensure that we are setting them up with the best food to keep them going through the day.
Our stainless-steel bento-style lunch box can be used for adults and children alike, it has never been easier to make sure that kids have healthy, balanced meals to take to school with them. With one larger 20 oz container and two 6 oz containers, all made of food-grade stainless steel with edging and snaps, Mira provides perfect eco-friendly, easy-clean lunchboxes for kids. Simply fill each section with a different part of the meal, such as a sandwich in the larger container and fruit or other healthy snacks in the smaller ones.
Okay, so we have found our perfect lunch containers for our kids to take to school, but how do we get them to eat the healthy food we fill the lunch boxes with? The answer may seem daunting to begin with but will make school lunches much easier overall: involve your kids. If you prepare lunches for the week on a Sunday, for example, and present kids with multiple healthy options for each day and each section of their lunch box, they are more likely to feel excited and enjoy getting involved, even if you opt to verbally tell them the options rather than visually showing them and letting them help prepare (though this can be fun too!). This is especially important as children progress through elementary school and begin to develop their tastes and interests. While younger children may decide 3 days later that the meal you have taken out of the fridge and sent them to school with is not the one that they want to eat at that moment in time, by involving them in the process even at 5 or 6 years old helps them to develop their tastes and abilities and decreases the likelihood that the food in their lunch box is something that they hate.
Ultimately, using bento-style lunchboxes, like Mira’s stainless-steel ones, is a great way of providing even elementary school children with a variety of healthy, balanced meal options for their lunches. Including them in the decision-making process for what they want to eat each day makes preparing lunches more enjoyable for everyone and teaches them about nutrition, making healthy food an exciting choice rather than something that they feel is forced upon them.
