One Great Idea to Simplify the School Lunch Making Process

Making school lunches can be an extremely repetitive and frustrating task. I know this because I was appointed the lunch maker for all my kids for the last 6 plus years. I know the feeling. Every evening you are about to get into bed and then you just remembered that you forgot to make the kids lunches. Now for me this doesnt happen every night but it does happen often enough that I remember just as I am about to get ready for bed.

The most frustrating part of making lunches isnt actually the work as much as it is trying to figure what the kids want to eat. Usually there are a few options for lunch making:

1. Have the kids make their own lunches. (This happens in fairy tales and perfect families. These types of families dont read blogs like this. Well because they are perfect. Not it mine!)

2. Make the same boring lunch every day. This is usually one of the three: 1. peanut butter and bread 2. Cream cheese and bread 3. PB&J.

3. Give the kids a bread roll or a couple of slices and bread and thats it. Enjoy! Yum!!

Because I am such a good dad I dont do any of the three above. I usually ask my kids what they for lunch the next day. But it happens often enough that I forget to ask them and then I am left with making lunches for them right before they head of to school in the morning.

Tired of having to figure out what my kids want to eat for lunch, this year I came up with an ingenious idea and my daughter helped me implement it right away.

I decided the best way to figure out what the kids would want to eat the next day would be to create a Lunch Chart. This lunch chart would have a table of cells and each cell would have a different lunch idea. Then we created another sheet with the kids names. Then we took one of the those rectangular/square flat promotional magnets you know the ones you get for free from the dentist / barber / optometrist / restaurant, and we cut it up and glued each of the kids names to each piece. The way the lunch chart worked was that we would put it on the fridge held up by a magnet. What you are left with is a fridge hanging lunch chart with magnet names for the kids to place their names in the appropriate lunch cell. Now that its halfway into the school year I can feel confident that this idea works well.

Here are the lunch ideas we placed in each cell:
Cream cheese sandwich
Peanut butter and honey sandwich
Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich
Grilled cheese sandwich
Pita pizza
Salami Sandwich
Turkey Sandwich
Yogurt (sweetened, or vanilla flavored)
Leftovers (pizza from yesterday’s dinner, mac and cheese, lasagna, etc)

I have attached a Word copy of the same lunch chart and names that we used for our lunch chart Here. Now you could download this chart and customize it the way you want.

Happy Lunch Making!!

Popularity: 1% [?]

One thought on “One Great Idea to Simplify the School Lunch Making Process

  • February 4, 2015 at 9:45 am
    Permalink

    This is definitely something I struggle with all the time. I like the idea but I dont know how well it would work with my kids.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *