Planning Packed School Lunches that Your Child Will Eat

One of the most important parts of the school day for children is lunch time and snack time, since these foods give them the energy to be able to go through the whole day learning. When you choose school supplies, make sure to buy a lunch box that your child will love to bring to school every day. It should be filled with healthy and nutritious food that will provide your child with the brain food they need to be a good student.
It is important to fill your child's lunchbox with things that you know they will eat. It is useless to pack a lunch that is full of great foods if your child does not eat them and instead trades them with others. Make sure that your child is involved in the planning of the meal so that you will be sure that they will eat it.
The first step in getting your child involved is sitting down with them and talking about what they will want to eat for that week. Make sure that you come to a compromise between things that they want and things that are good for them. You can make a grocery list after talking and you can have them go with you when you go shopping. Not only will this make sure that your child will eat, but it will also give your child the feeling that they have got the power to make decisions and that imparts a sense of self-worth. You can alternate healthy foods with pre-packed lunches, which children usually find appealing. Make sure that these are balanced by healthy foods during the rest of the week.
Kids have the tendency to play with their food before eating it, so make sure that the food is easy to eat and does not allow them to play with it too much. You can do this by making the foods finger foods so that they can talk to other kids while eating rather than just picking and playing with their food. You can fill the lunch box with small portions and plenty of choices one day in the week, so that they will enjoy eating it.
Another thing you can do to help your child feel more involved is to get them to help pack their lunch with you. You can make this fun and have foods in different shapes and colors for them to arrange. Or you can have them form faces on their food or decorate it, so that they will feel proud when they eat it and know that they helped make it.
Bread and dips are great to put in a lunch box since they are fun to eat and you can use nutritious breads and dips. You can try different dippers like crackers, rice cakes, croissants, muffins, bagels, foccacia and pita bread. These are high in fiber and vitamins as well. As for dips, salsa, fruit dips, bean dips, and hummus are delicious and nutritious.
Remember to include a drink like water or a fruit juice in a juice box. Make sure that it is real fruit juice, rather than a drink made up mostly of sugar, food coloring, and artificial flavorings. If you consider even 100% fruit juices too high in natural sugars, your child can bring water which is very good for the teeth and the rest of the body. Some schools offer the option of buying milk alone when lunch is brought from home, so keeping milk safely cold in a lunch box is not an issue.