9 lunch box ideas, tips and tricks for new kindy mums

By Katie Fowler at The Healthy Mummy

Are we ready to send them off? Are they ready for such a big change? Life changes can be tricky but packing a healthy lunch box for your children doesn’t have to be.

A nutritious lunch box can help with a child’s concentration and learning, so thankfully we can send our kiddies off to kindy with ease.

Check out the following lunchbox tips from The Healthy Mummy.

Follow these tips when packing your kindy kid’s lunchbox

1. Get your child involved in the lunch box prep to make them excited

Praise them for choosing healthy alternatives and let them start to choose what they want in their lunchbox. This way things will move a lot smoother, not to mention faster when they begin to get the hang of it all.

2. Add vegetables

Adding in these not so popular foods for your little ones is a necessity for your child’s health. Add the vegetables as snacks by making vegetable sticks and include a dip. Use carrots, cucumber, capsicum and any other colourful vegetable you can think of! Eating these snacks at home with your kids will encourage to eat them when they’re at kindy too.

We suggest keeping a nice cool ice brick or frozen popper near the dip in the lunch box to keep it nice and cool.

Try this homemade hummus.

3. Make lunch colourful

The more appetising the better. Use the colours of the rainbow to excite your child and make them WANT to reach in and start eating. All of a sudden, fruit and veg looks less ‘dull’.

Tomatoes, spinach, carrots, blueberries, cheese, the mind boggles with possibilities!

4. Fresh is best

Especially when it comes to fruit. Aim for fresh fruit where possible as dried fruits or fruits in syrups tend to be higher in additives and sugars, and we all know too well what our kids are like with processed sugars…

Try these sugar-free snacks to pop in to your kids’ lunch boxes, they won’t know the difference but you will!

5. Snacks

Try making simple things like no bake bars or bliss balls. Easy to make, store well, can freeze and the ingredients and choice in flavours are almost endless.

6. Meal prep

Just like you meal prep and plan meals for dinners, do the same for lunchboxes to ensure you’re offering your child a variety of foods to keep things exciting. This not only benefits your child but you too, as it frees up time and avoids the morning rush!

Make as much as you can the night before, or even the weekend before and freeze. Better yet get the kids in the kitchen, they’ll be excited to start kindy and want to help you!

7. Just add water

With drinks, the easiest and cheapest solution is what’s best for little bodies. Stick with water to keep your children hydrated.

8. Variety is key

Lunchboxes don’t simply need to contain a sandwich and a piece of fruit, use things like arancini balls, savoury muffins, pasta and fruit salads.

Your child will be more inclined to eat and finish their lunch if they have a variety which doesn’t need to take you 5 hours to make either.

9. Use a cookbook

Take the hassle out of finding ideas week in and week out by using The Healthy Kids Lunch Boxes book.

Ensuring our children’s lunch boxes are filled with healthy, easy to prepare foods that the kids will actually eat is really important. A school lunch box can potentially make up to 30-50% of our child’s daily food intake so, we want to make them count. That’s we created our Healthy Kids Lunch Boxes book!