How to pack school lunch for a preschooler

Five pieces of advice that don't say much about what kind food you should put in their lunch box.

Figuring out what to serve to preschoolers for lunch is part of my personal and professional life.

I have a four-year-old son who is about to enter his third year of preschool (#NovemberBaby). Since his school does not offer a lunch program, we’ve had to always pack his lunch. Additionally, as a part of my current job, I write the school menus (breakfasts, lunches, and snacks) for two preschools in New Jersey.¹

These roles, both as a mother and as a dietitian responsible for menu planning, naturally influence and enhance each other.

I wouldn’t have as much intuition about school menu planning if I weren’t also a mom trying to feed my own young children. Similarly, dedicating time to designing nutritious and appealing meals for hundreds of other people’s children has influenced how I prepare meals for my own kids.

In this essay I’m focusing on the lunches that I pack for my son as his mother.

These lunches are very different from the lunches on the menus that I create at work. Several reasons contribute to this difference, with perhaps the most significant being that school-produced lunches are prepared by skilled cooks who dedicate at least two hours after breakfast to preparing lunch. In contrast, I have around five to ten minutes each morning to pack my son's lunch. The same butter knife swiftly transitions from buttering toast for breakfast to spreading sunbutter on sandwich bread for lunch.

Packing lunch for a preschooler shouldn’t be that complicated, but it felt like a learning curve for me.

So if you’re a parent preparing to pack school lunches this fall, I hope that reading the things I’ve learned along the way will make the lunch-packing process a little bit easier.

Paid subscribers will also have access to:

• A list of the easy entrees I pack for my son’s school lunches

• A peak into our “snack cabinet”

• Links to my favorite lunch-packing gear

My preschooler eating lunch at home this summer.

1. A packed lunch should be a comforting reminder of home; it’s perhaps not the best time to stealthily “work on” picky eating.

My top priority is ensuring that when my son opens his lunch box, he feels comfortable with what’s available.

I want lunchtime to feel like a relaxing break during his day when he can trust that there will always be multiple foods in his lunch box that he can enjoy (sometimes referred to as “safe” foods).

In general, I introduce new foods at home, rather than in the school lunch box. There’s nothing wrong with trying to throw a few cucumber slices into the lunch box even when you know that your child hasn’t even eaten that food at home when you’ve offered them; however, I typically opt not to do things like this because I believe it’s an unnecessary extra step on busy mornings, and often results in food waste.²

2. Getting your child’s input on what you pack is important.

I make an effort to involve my son in planning his lunches, though he doesn't dictate the specific items packed each day.

To encourage him to be part of the process, I regularly bring him grocery shopping with me on Sunday mornings. When we’re shopping, I ask for his input on specific things, including:

• Selecting at least one kind of fruit and one kind of snack (pretty much any snack) for the week that looks good to him.

• Offering his input on the “entrees” that will be packed. I ask questions like: Are you in the mood for anything specific for lunch this week? Are we thinking chicken nuggets sound good, or what about cinnamon raisin bagels? Tell me if you see anything that looks yummy while we’re walking around.

• Informing me about things that he sees other kids at school eating that he wants to try too. What kinds of foods do other kids bring that look good to you?

3. Adapt to preferences. It’s helpful to see what comes home uneaten, but not helpful to make a big deal about it. Just use it as information about what might need to change!

When my son first started preschool, he would check in with me before we left the house to make sure that I packed him string cheese in his lunch box.

However, after a few weeks, the string cheese began returning uneaten. After a couple of days of this, I asked him, "Do you still want string cheese in your lunch?" He replied very matter-of-factly, "I don't like string cheese anymore."

I would stop packing string cheese for a while and replace it with something else, like a drinkable yogurt.

In a month, I’d ask him if he wanted to try string cheese again, and learn that it was still not going to make the cut. Maybe at some point this fall, I’ll ask again.

The key is to pay enough attention to notice when your kids’ preferences are changing, without subjecting them to daily interrogations about what they did or didn’t eat.

4. As the parent/caregiver, having some kind of flexible lunch formula can help during the morning chaos.

Sometimes I genuinely am not sure how I get two kids and myself ready, drop them off, and then commute to work to really *begin* my day. Any single, working parent knows that it’s a miracle that we all (for the most part) leave the house with brushed teeth and hair.

This is all to say, I cannot spend more than a few minutes thinking about and preparing a school lunch in the morning.

Over the years, I’ve developed a simple lunch-packing formula that I run through in my head: easy, familiar entree (list available below for paid subscribers) + fruit (fresh/fruit cup/pouch) + yogurt/yogurt drink/milk/cheese stick + snack (cookies, crackers, granola bar, etc.).³

If the morning is going smoothly, I occasionally give my son a choice between two entree options. For instance: Would you prefer chicken nuggets or pasta today? or Do you want your roll with sunbutter & jelly or cream cheese?

If things are on the hectic side, I stay quiet, place whatever I decided to make for him into his lunch box, and know he’s going to be fine because there are always multiple components to choose from that I already know he likes.

5. Make meaningful inclusions and exclusions.

Lunchtime is an opportunity for social interactions and building a sense of community around food. You can encourage those connections with meaningful inclusions and exclusions.

I think the best way to demonstrate this is through examples.

Meaningful inclusion: One time after asking my son about snacks that other kids bring in their lunches, his face lit up as he told me about a friend that often brings orange jello.

I had not considered packing jello in his lunch box, but the next time we went to the store, I stopped our cart in front of the jello and told him to pick two flavors, one of which was of course orange.

He couldn’t wait to pull his jello out of his lunch box the next day.

The idea of him excitedly showing his friend his orange jello and sitting together enjoying their “jello time” is one of the sweetest things I can imagine him doing at school.

Meaningful exclusion: Last year, a child in my son’s class had a nut allergy.

Although the school wasn't nut-free, we switched to sunbutter and nut-free snacks to ensure he could sit with his friend.

After explaining twice that Nutter Butters needed to be eaten at home, my son understood. In this case, prioritizing inclusivity for a child with allergies was a good reason to exclude certain foods from his lunch box.⁴

The lunch box is a little piece of home that goes to school with our kids.

As we get closer to the start of another season of school lunches, I hope we can keep these lessons in mind: that lunches can bring our children comfort when they’re away from home, that our children's input is such a valuable part of the process, that changes in preferences are to be expected, that a flexible formula can ease morning chaos, and that meaningful inclusions and exclusions foster connections.