When Rylan started Kindergarten, one thing we were encouraged to do every morning was talk about the lunch options for the day. In our school district, there are usually 2 different hot lunch options every day, along with a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables to choose from. Also an option every day is a sunbutter sandwich, which is a PB substitute made from sunflower seeds. (Our district doesn't serve peanut butter anymore due to allergies.) Anyhow, so at the beginning of the year, we would go over the lunch choices every morning and explain what some of the items were. Rylan was never very excited about this discussion. Every day after school I would ask him what he picked that day, and it started to be sunbutter sandwiches every single day. So I made a rule that he had to pick something else 1 time a week. I figured if he just started trying things, he would like them, but he was hesitant to pick something new. Then he told me that he never picked any vegetables and he only sometimes picked a fruit. No wonder he was hungry at the end of the day! I was starting to get concerned about his nutrition when I came across a blog one day. It's called "This Lunch Rox" and I have it linked on my blog to the right. It's written by a mom who packs her kids' lunch every day and takes pictures of it and blogs about it. Sounds boring, but she does some pretty cool themed lunches a couple times a week and not only are they healthy, but they are adorable! While I never thought that I would pack Rylan's lunch every day (because I always ate at school and I really never even thought about it as an option) I found myself getting more and more excited to do that very thing. I asked Rylan what he thought and he was even more excited than me about bringing his own lunch to school. So, we looked through the above mentioned lunch blog together and talked about some things he would like to try in his lunch.
The first week, I used a variety of rubbermaid and ziploc containers to hold his food, but soon found it wasn't the best idea. He had trouble getting them open and it was a pain for him to keep track of it all. We needed something better. One of the posts on the lunch blogger's site was about all the "stuff" she uses; lunch boxes, thermoses, ice packs, cookie cutters, etc. From all her reviews, I decided to try the Go Green lunch box from gogreenlunchbox.com. So far, we LOVE it! It's easy to open, everything stays fresh in the individually sealed compartments, there is room for the water bottle right in there, and it can hold more than enough food for Rylan. Here are some pictures of a few of the lunches I've packed for Rylan.
This first lunch has crackers, cheese and pepperoni, fresh strawberries, celery with peanut butter and raisins, honey cinnamon almonds, and milk.
The next one has a PB and J sandwich on honey wheat sandwich thin bread, strawberries and blueberries, a cheese stick, red and yellow bell pepper strips with ranch dressing, and milk.
The last one is half a sandwich thin, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni, celery with PB and raisins, grapes and milk.
And here is the insulated bag the lunch box goes in. There are a wide variety of colors and prints to choose from for the bags on the website.
While I'm not as creative as the author of This Lunch Rox, I'm thrilled to be providing my son with a lunch that has a variety of healthy foods every day. I don't know if I will continue to take pictures of Rylan's lunches, but we'll see. Oh, and you may be wondering about me putting peanut butter in Rylan's lunches. His school isn't a peanut restricted campus, so kids can still bring peanut butter in their lunches, they just don't serve it in the cafeteria.
