The Best Way to Pack Back to School Lunch

I can’t believe I have a kid in Kindergarten! She has needed school lunches for the last 3 years for her preschool, but during those years, her programs have been 2-4 days a week for 4 hours where they eat lunch at the very end. Now she’s at school for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week! She definitely needs a good, substantial lunch to get her through the day now. I want to make sure she has everything she needs in her lunch to ensure she stays full and focused at school! Here’s some tips to put together a good lunch that will get your kid through the day and let you have a #BigLittleWin as a mom 😉

Make sure foods are filling. With one lunchtime fairly early in the school day, I want to make sure Maddie Grace’s lunch is packed with food that is going to keep her full all day. I don’t want her to get hungry again in the afternoon when she needs to be focused on learning.

Pack foods your kid loves and you know will eat. In an ideal world, my children would eat everything that I packed for them, but in real life, that doesn’t happen. So I make sure to pack her lunchbox with foods I know she will eat. Because of taste, I pick Yoplait products for all of our yogurt needs. They are so delicious (I eat them too)!

Give them variety. In the lunchbox and day to day, mix things up so your kids don’t get bored. My mom loves to tell people about how when I was a kid, I would like one type of sandwich for a couple of months, then get bored of that, and ask for something else for a couple months, repeat. Everyday I add variety in Maddie Grace’s lunchbox: a sandwich, Yoplait Yogurt products, fruit, vegetable, and some type of other treat. Every other day, we do a different type of sandwich, a different type of Yoplait product, a different type of fruit, etc. This way she won’t get bored with her lunches and will be excited to see what’s in there! I love that Yoplait gives us a ton of variety in both products and flavors that my kids love. From Dunkers to Go-Gurt to Smoothies to Yoplait single serve cups. I haven’t found a Yoplait product or flavor that my kids don’t like, and they are perfectly sized for kids lunches!

Let your kid help. Maddie Grace loves helping pack her lunches! We always pack lunches the night before to make our mornings a little easier. One of her favorite sandwich options is peanut butter and strawberry jelly roll ups, and she loves helping with the whole process – spreading the peanut butter and jelly, and rolling them up (but I do all the cutting).

Keep food separate and well packaged. Having something leak in a lunchbox can be pretty terrible. This is one of the many reasons we like the Yoplait yogurt products, they are all packaged to prevent any leaks, and I know my Maddie Grace will eat the entire thing so there’s no risk of her trying to bring any home and making a mess in her lunchbox! Maddie Grace doesn’t like when her food spills onto each other, and so it’s nice to have things individually packaged and ready to go so that she easily can eat them at school!

And of course – always clean out the lunchbox immediately when your kid gets home from school so it’s clean and ready to go the next day! I think every mom knows how terrible it is if you forget to clean out the lunchbox after school Friday and go to pack a new lunch Sunday night with leftover lunch still in the bag.

Grocery shopping is one of the hardest things for me as a mom of 3 kids (soon to be 4). I just can’t take the littles in the store with me, and by the time Tom is home every night, I’m too tired to go. I love that Walmart online grocery pickup makes grocery shopping so much easier for busy moms. I always use online grocery pickup at Walmart because they have the best deals and make it so easy!

What are your tips for school lunch packing? Would love to hear any below!