How to Make School Lunches Your Child Will Eat
Aug 31, 2010 Eco Friendly Parenting
Many parents these days are concerned with the quality of lunches provided by public schools. To put it mildly, many schools offer extremely unhealthy foods for lunch. As parents who want their kids to eat better, how can you help them?
Packing a healthy lunch for your child is one of the simplest things you can do to help them eat better. The challenge is making a lunch they’re more likely to eat than to trade away to friends.
Pay Attention to Their Likes
The first thing to do is know what your child likes to eat. This may change from year to year and even in the middle of the school year. Keep talking to your kids about what they like to eat for lunch and find healthy ways to provide that.
School lunch packing is not the best time to experiment or challenge your child’s food preferences. It’s easy for them to trade away unliked foods, or even to just throw it away uneaten. Push their interests at home where you can see the results.
Leftovers
Sometimes leftovers are great for lunches. You may need to provide a thermos to keep the food warm, but other leftovers taste great cold.
If there’s a meal your kids really love, make extras that you can separate into easy lunches and freeze. You can save excess for dinners for the whole family as well, of course. Providing them with favorite home cooked meals to eat at school may increase the chances that your child will eat what you’ve given them.
Wraps
Don’t stick to the traditional sandwiches for every meal. Wraps are a great alternative, so long as you pick healthy whole grain tortillas, not just white flour tortillas.
Wraps are easy to make. You want to cover most of the tortilla, but leave a little distance from the edges to keep things neat. Lunch meats, vegetables and spreads work well. Mix them up and find out which your kids love the most. Do let your kids try hummus sometime, first at home, but if they like it, hummus is a great wrap ingredient.
Healthy Sides
Know what your kids love in terms of fruits and vegetables. Most will have a few favorites. Try to provide these in their school lunches.
My kids love bell peppers and cucumbers, for example. Put these in their lunch and they’ll usually be eaten.
Keep it Simple
Kids don’t need a feast at lunchtime. They need simple, filling foods and not a big selection. They’re usually as interested in chatting with their friends as they are in eating their food. Sometimes more interested in chatting with their friends. Give them too many choices and a lot of it will end up in the trash.
Dessert Doesn’t Have to Mean Sugar
Kids love getting a dessert item in their lunches. An occasional cookie or other treat isn’t going to ruin them either. But the dessert doesn’t have to be cookies or candy.
Berries work great. Granola bars usually have a lot of sugar, but have other healthy ingredients. Try to balance sweetness with good for your kids.
Variety May Not Be the Spice of Life
Don’t feel bad if you’re packing the same lunch over and over. Most kids like consistency. If they complain, that’s the time to mix things up.
Tags: back to school, bag lunch, food, healthy food, school, school lunches
Keeping Back to School Eco Friendly
Jul 28, 2010 Eco Friendly Parenting
It’s time to start thinking about the start of the school year. In my area it’s coming up fast, less than a month away.
Now is the time that stores start offering school supplies in earnest and parents respond. Much of it cannot be helped, as schools often provide lists of supplies your children will need for the classroom. Then there are clothes, backpacks and so forth that need to be ready for school.
It can be pretty bad from an environmental perspective. So many things to buy. So many choices that really aren’t doing the environment any favors.
Review What You Have
Take a good look at the start of each school year and see what you have that can be reused or continue to be used.
If you buy good quality, there’s a good chance that your kids’ backpacks
I suggest avoiding backpacks with favorite characters if possible. These can be outgrown because your child doesn’t like a particular show anymore or becomes aware that the other kids don’t like that show. It can be embarrassing to own the wrong backpack at times like that.
If your child brings lunch to school, take a look at what you have. Make sure your bag is lead and BPA free
Don’t forget their clothes. Many outfits will be outgrown over the summer, so see what you need to buy to start things off, but remember that the weather will be hot for a while yet in many areas. Take advantage of thrift store shopping and do consider the colder weather for your area if you see appropriate clothes available.
Find Out What You Will Need
You may not need to buy a lot of school supplies. Many schools provide lists of things they will need for the classrooms while others don’t expect you to provide anything. Buy environmentally friendly options when possible.
Amazon has a green office supplies
Plan on Walking, Biking or Busing to School
Depending on how far you live from your children’s school, plan on having them walk, bike or take the bus there. Don’t join the masses crowding in to drop the kids off by car if you can help it.
If you’re close enough, you can also encourage your fellow parents to have their kids walk to school. Some do a walking school bus where one parent leads a group of kids to pick up the various kids and walk them all to school together. It’s healthy for all concerned and takes care of a lot of the safety concerns many parents have.
Plan Healthy Lunches
The easiest way to provide your kids with a healthy lunch at school is to use leftovers from the previous night that don’t need to be reheated. This won’t work every day.
If you want to provide warm food, get a Thermos
Don’t buy the prepackaged lunches or snack size bags of chips or crackers. You can put appropriate amounts into your reusable containers quite easily.
Tags: back to school
Trying to Figure Out the Green in My Daughter’s School Fundraiser
Sep 15, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting
You know it’s really back to school when the kids start bringing home the fundraiser packets. Time to try to get relatives to buy overpriced stuff in the name of helping our schools.
This school is selling Sally Foster stuff. Wrapping paper, all the usual stuff. And cookie dough, which I will admit to a weakness for. The banner and book talk about offering green items, so I decided to take a look.
It’s hard to tell just exactly how green some offerings are. There’s gift wrap printed on recycled, recyclable and biodegradable paper. Not bad, but kind of meh.
The reusable shopping bags are much better. I can’t tell what they’re made of, but still it’s a good, green idea.
Of course, the prizes the kids get for selling are still pretty horrible, but it’s hard to keep them from getting excited about prizes.
The problem with school fundraisers isn’t just whether or not they offer recycled paper or anything environmentally friendly at all. The big problem is that we deal with them every year, sometimes more than once. That part’s a bit of a pain. It’s really hard to ignore the pressure to sell, as the kids are so excited about it all.
I don’t know that there are any easy green solutions for the problem either. There are affordable, environmentally friendly things you can buy, but soon enough you don’t need more of them, at least not unless they’re really practical things like cleansers.
I’m glad even so to see that even a semblance of environmental awareness is creeping into school fundraising. It’s not much, but it is something.
Tags: back to school, education, fundraisers
Off to a Cheap Start on Back to School Shopping!
Aug 19, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting
Back to school is off to a cheap start for us this year. I didn’t buy anything for my daughter before school started because her backpack and lunch bag are still in good condition, and I didn’t know what else she would need, as the school hadn’t sent a list.
Turns out that was the exact right move.
Her teacher provided all the supplies she has to have. I really hope it all came from a school budget. The teacher does have a small wish list, and apparently this is the first year the school is allowing teachers to ask parents to help with supplies.
Compared with the lists from last year, that came as a surprise.
Of course, this means I have no say in how environmentally friendly any of my daughter’s school supplies are… aside from going ahead and getting some pencils for the class or something, that being the level of things on her 4 item wish list.
We still have plenty of supplies for at home from last year, so I’m thinking I won’t need to buy anything, at least not until later in the year.
Tags: back to school, shopping
Are You Ready to Send Your Kids Back to School?
Aug 5, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting
I can hardly believe it’s almost time for my kids to go back to school. This summer has been incredibly hectic with the move and all, and has flown by worse than usual.
And the school office should be open tomorrow so that I can finally register my daughter in our new school district. They wouldn’t let me do that at the office.
With a new school year often comes new school supplies. Backpacks, lunch boxes, binders and so forth go flying off stores shelves so that kids will be ready for school.
It’s nice when you can keep them green.
I got things started around here last year by buying my daughter a Klean Kanteen. She loves it and will continue to use it this year. I’m hoping for cooperation in reusing her lunch bag and backpack this year because really, they aren’t in that bad of shape.
Fortunately, younger kids aren’t always going to think of back to school as a time to go shopping for new supplies, so I think I can get away with it. I’m most tempted by a new reusable lunch bag, as there are some really nice ones out there but really her bag looks to be up for at least another year’s use, so why replace it?
If you have to buy school supplies for your kids, there’s a good article over on the Healthy Child, Healthy World site on avoiding PVC and such in school supplies. You may not always have a choice in all the materials your child uses, as sometimes teachers will provide folders, but when you have a choice, do try to keep it friendly not only to the environment but to your children.
What are your favorite green back to school tips?
Tags: back to school, green school supplies, reusable lunch bags
