There is a mountain of research indicating when children are involved in their food choices, they take ownership for it, and are more likely to eat it. So I thought I’d share with you 3 Fun Games for Planning Lunchboxes With Your Kids – this way you can benefit from planning with reduced stress, and help ensure your children eat their healthy lunchbox.
A Bit of Background
I worked in Corporate World (capital denotes the significance of this time in my life) for 17 years, and for 14 years of those I was in a management position. As you can appreciate, planning and forecasting featured heavily. Then when I left Corporate World, I spent 10 years helping Israel build up his photography business (Israel Smith Photographers). In the early days, we had lots of business coaching, and guess what? It taught us the power of planning and forecasting. So I am not exactly sure why it took me 5 years of being a mum to really realise the power of planning around meals – and lunchboxes in particular!
Now I always plan our meals and lunchboxes, and it saves me time, money and reduces my stress around meals and packing lunchboxes.
But do you know the number 1 thing I do to ensure my kids eat what I make them? I get them involved in the planning process.
Don’t get me wrong, our Mister (almost) 5 still sometimes sits at the dinner table, and before a morsel even reaches his lips, he tells me he doesn’t like it or he’s not hungry. However, most nights we have no problems with him eating his dinner, and most days his lunchbox is pretty much empty at the end of the day.
The Approach
The common approach across each of these 3 fun games for planning lunchboxes with your kids, is that you let your children choose what they want. This means they own the choice, BUT my golden rule is that you let them choose from 3 or 4 things you select. This way, you still influence what they can have, and ultimately you hold the power – even though they don’t realise it.
Core Components of a Healthy Lunchbox
To pack a healthy lunchbox, select 3 or 4 items from each of these core components for your kids to choose from. Then, get them to choose their favourite 1 or 2 of each, to go into their lunchbox.
- At least 1 piece of fruit (eg. apple, banana, strawberry, pineapple, pear, peaches, etc)
- At least 1 vegetable (eg. carrot, celery, corn, beans, capsicum, finger food vegetables, etc)
- 1 healthy snack (eg. homemade muesli bar, slice, cake, dips, crackers, cheese, yoghurt, etc)
- A lunch main, containing protein, carbs and good fats (eg. shredded chicken salad wholegrain sandwich, sausage rolls, homemade hamburger, etc)
At the end of this process, your child’s lunchbox should have 1 piece of fruit, 1 vegetable, 1 healthy snack and 1 lunch main. This will give them lots of good nutrition, and including protein and good fats will help keep them full and keep their energy levels sustained and balanced throughout the day. What’s even better, they’ll eat everything because they chose it themselves!
The 3 Fun Games
Here are the 3 fun games to get your kids to choose their ingredients for their lunchbox.
ONE – Choice Jars
- Grab 4 empty jars (or glasses or bowls or hats)
- Write your 3 or 4 choices on small pieces of paper, grouped into fruit, vegies, healthy snacks and mains
- Put the fruit choices into one jar, the vegie options into another jar, healthy snacks into the third jar, and the mains into jar number four.
- Now get your child to choose 1 or 2 items from each jar. These choices then become their selections for the weeks’ lunchbox.
It’s kind of like drawing out of the hat except they see what’s in there, and then make a choice!
(The above idea is modelled from this blog How to Create Mid-Week Meal Jars to reduce stress around dinner time.)
TWO – Naughts & Crosses
- Determine your 3 or 4 selections from each of the core components for the week
- Create a grid (naughts and crosses style) for each core component – OR you could just make one big grid with all your choices
- Put pictures or the words of your choices in the grid
- Now ask your child to circle (naughts) the ones they want, and cross the ones they don’t want. The circled ones are their choices for this week.
THREE – Code Cracker
OK so this one is a little more onerous on you, but your kids will love it because you’re really playing a game with them. Our daughter designed this game one morning. At first, I was so annoyed because I just wanted a straight answer about what to plan for this week, but I soon realised both kids loved the idea of them using code letters for me to work out what they wanted. This game is better suited to older kids, say, 7 and above.
- Give your child the 3 or 4 selections to choose from for each of the core components.
- Ask them to make their choices
- Then get them to write down each choice – in code – using the Alphabet Symbols Code Sheet to the right. (Click on the image for a large printable copy.)
- Now you have to crack the code to work out what they want!
Like I said this game is a bit more ‘work’ on your part, but they have loads of fun with it, and the results are worth it.
My Personal Tips To Make Planning Easier
I want you to have a good time packing lunchboxes for your children, rather than it being a chore. If you have fun doing it, your children are more likely to love what you pack. What’s more, you’ll feel better about the process too 🙂
My personal tips to make planning easier are:
- Try using one of the games above to make fun a regular part of planning your lunchboxes
- Consider involving your children in planning all your meals each week
- Plan before your shopping day, so you can factor in the kids’ choices into your shopping
On top of these tips, I encourage you to look at The 5 Minute Healthy Lunchbox System™ eCourse and see if it’s right for you.
I developed and refined the eCourse to help make the process of planning lunchboxes easy, and to help it flow naturally into the preparing and packing stages. The eCourse gives you a proven system to make the whole process straightforward and stress-free.
Enrolments are now open, and the course kicks off on Wednesday 14th October – around the beginning of Term 4. Learn more and enrol here.
Over to you
Have you got any other fun ways to get your kids involved in planning lunchboxes or other meals?
Why not share them in the comments below? I’ll add them to this post so other families in our community can benefit from all of your experience.
Further reading & activities