Share your healthy tips and hacks for your children’s school lunches! - £200 voucher to be won!

[EllieSmumsnet]

Every parent wants their child to be happy and energised during the school day, and ensuring they have a nutritious and delicious snack for that much needed pick-me-up during the school day is vital. But as busy parents, preparing healthy, interesting lunches every day can feel like a challenge. However, it doesn't have to be difficult!

Whether it's through creative flavours, fun snacks, or child-friendly healthy lunch recipes, we want to hear your tips and tricks for making lunchtime enjoyable and nutritious for your kids.

Do you swear by bento boxes or batch-cooking on a Sunday? Have you found your holy grail quick and easy tasty snacks that are also school friendly? How do you ensure your child’s school lunches are fun and healthy? Share your secrets with us!

• Share your tips and tricks in the thread below to be entered into a prize draw
• One lucky MNer will win a £200 voucher

Here is what Soreen has to say:
"At Soreen we understand the pressure on parents to provide their children with snacks that are enjoyable and tasty, yet healthy and nutritious. There are so many snacks targeted at children and families that don’t provide that vital pick me up that children need from their snacks during the school day, and instead are high in sugar and fat which are not only unhealthy but also cause dips in energy shortly after being consumed.

It’s for this reason that we offer Soreen Lunchbox Loaves, an ideal solution for parents looking to provide a nutritious yet delicious pick me up for their children that are available in 4 fruity flavours. They’re school friendly and Good Choice approved, meaning they won’t get confiscated from the school lunchbox police or be returned at the end of the school day. Our Lunchbox Loaves contain deliciously squidgy energy, providing that much needed reboot to the day, leaving your child energised and happy for the day ahead!"

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!
MNHQ
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My healthy tips are, cheese cubes, small wraps with tuna and sweetcorn (wraps keep the fillings in so much better) grapes, s/f mini jellies in silicon muffin bun cases, kedgeree, and drinks in a flask.

My two always loved wholewheat wraps filled, rolled, then cut into smaller sections.
Sometimes we would have snack making sessions where we'd be making flapjacks or similar with a lot less sugar than shop bought ones, and added fruit such as chopped dried apricots or grated apple. If they'd helped make them, they ate them.

Humous and veg sticks

I have one son who has school dinners every day and one who has ASD and a limited diet. He eats the same packed lunch every single day-plain pasta, cucumber slices, grapes, an oaty bar and a packet of crisps.

Pack what your kids will eat.

We use a bento box - sandwich, fruit, cheese, raisins, cheddars or crisps and yogurt

My hack is getting around no sweets and chocolate rules with toddler fruit snacks, raisins with a few chocolate or yogurt covered raisins mixed in or their favourer cereal.

Mini pancakes from Costco as an occasional change and treat.

Cutting sandwiches in different shapes helps too.

I bought a couple of Kisstta Lunch Boxes, similar to a bento box, I can batch cook at the weekend, and add noodles with veg, pasta dishes, and fruit crumbles. I think some children like variety - others like the same meal day after day (I have one of each) Having a nutritious meal - and avoiding spending the lunchtime in the queue - only to get oven chips and a slice of pizza is a much better option.

My tips would be a bento box for warmer months and a thermas type flask for the colder months - I like to know my DC's have a warm meal of noodles, pasta or a rice dish, and in summer Bento boxes, fruit, wraps, veg sticks and dips, yoghurts and cheese and crackers.

store-bought rotisserie chicken (or just a prepared breast or thigh) to make quick work of lunch. Dice it up and pack it in a bento box with halved cherry tomatoes, shredded lettuce, bread cubes, ranch and a side of halved grapes for a fun riff on chicken salad.
cheese (such as mozzarella cheese or cheddar) and crackers, plus simple fruit and veggie sides like bell pepper, clementine, sliced cucumber slices, and/or peas

Lots of lovely advice here. One of my favourite tips which I’ll share is that I make pizza pinwheels by simply rolling out a puff pastry sheet, spreading some passata with herbs, sprinkling cheese and rolling the whole thing up like a Swiss roll. Slice into lots of discs, bake and freeze. You can get them out of the freezer in the morning and put them in a lunchbox, they’ll be defrosted in time for lunch and keep the rest of the lunchbox cool. I do the same thing with the freezer with tray bakes such as sprinkle cake, that way I know exactly what’s gone into it.

I am British Chinese and was using Bento boxes a long time ago. My son’s nursery workers had never seen one and told me they were very jealous. I do not make art like shaping rice in to Pandas as I didn’t have time.

I often put small pieces of frozen sliced chicken, beef, ham in to keep the whole lunch cooler. It’s defrosted by lunchtime. Make small flapjacks with fruit in. Deliberately cook too much rice to make rice balls, you do need to be very careful how you store cooked rice. Cucumber and carrot sticks. Small dumplings, noodle salad and also sandwiches and cold pizza sometimes.

I forgot to put the filling in my son’s sandwich once, he never let me forget that!

Home made muffins savory and sweet.
Cold pasta salads - change it up weekley so they don't get bored.
Some easy to eat fruits, easy peeler, grapes, blueberries and strawberries are very convienet.
DC love eggs so a boiled egg is a must.

Sandwiches made with whole meal bread change up fillings.
Small portion of kiddilicious crisps.

I send homemade soup, or a smaller portion of dinner, in a thermos. It's nice to send something warm sometimes, especially as the weather gets colder.

when you read the ingredients:

Fortified Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin (B3), Thiamin (B1)), Water, Strawberry Pieces (7%) (Concentrated Apple Purée, Strawberry Purée, Fructose Glucose Syrup, Humectant: Glycerol, Sugar, Wheat Fibre, Palm Fat, Gelling Agent: Pectin, Acidity Regulator: Malic Acid, Colouring: Fruit and Plant Concentrates, (Concentrate of Carrot, Pumpkin, Blueberry), Natural Flavouring), Sugar, Maize Starch, Strawberry Purée (5%), Partially Inverted Refiners Syrup, Malted Barley Flour (1%), Natural Flavourings, Vegetable Fats (Rapeseed, Palm), Salt, Preservative: Calcium Propionate, Yeast.

A pulpy mess of sugar in various forms (I particularly like Partially Inverted Refiners Syrup) , three types of emulsifiers, palm fat twice, not once, ...

Love how last week it was all about Gut health and this week , a gut destroyer.

@EllieSmumsnet is there a winner for this please or is the thread still runnig ?

@EllieSmumsnet Bumping this thread - do we have a winner please ? tq

Congratulations @MixedCouple2 you are the winner of this discussion!