Halloween Themed Lunches! The excitement around holidays is a great way to tie in some fun holiday foods into lunches. This strategy is all about safe exposure. By integrating new food items or familiar foods in unfamiliar formats into a festive theme, you’re providing a fun, low-stakes environment for interaction. Your child holds the power: they can touch, smell, and observe the new ingredient, and ultimately choose whether or not to try it, without the anxiety of a formal meal.
In the spooky lunches shown above, I focused on:
High-Contrast Ingredients: Utilizing olives and other bold colors to create dramatic designs (like spooky eyeballs!) that double as exposure foods.
Novel Shapes: Using different-sized bread cutters for ghost sandwiches or making “teeth” out of cheese slices.
Texture Exploration: Switching up pizza bases (mini English muffins versus homemade crust) to change the “feel.”
Pack an acai or smoothie bowl for lunch with all the toppings. This lunch is a great way to increase the amount of your child’s daily fruit intake. I used a sorbet based acai in the above picture but a thick smoothie can also be made instead. Having your child create their own acai bowl masterpiece is an exciting way to have them experiment with different textures and flavors and combining these toppings that is within their control.
Snack Boxes. These are a perfect way to pack all your child’s favorites or if you want to introduce them to a new food, this is a safe way to place the new item in its own separate space without touching their familiar foods.
Holiday themed snacks and foods are a great way to playfully have your picky eater try new or familiar foods that have a slight variation in their appearance. Even though many of these snacks here are sweet, it’s easier for a child to try them because they not only tend to be a preferred flavor but because there are also so many fun ways to build stories with these snacks. The goal is have your child become comfortable and flexible with foods and gradually they will be able to apply that approach to other types of foods
Sweet Rolls (Hawaiian Rolls) are a must in my house, so many different snacks and meals are made with these amazing rolls. I used these to get my child to start eating sandwiches, first I started with adding Nutella, then I transitioned to a savory type-just cheese on the roll, then once they were comfortable with that I added a tiny piece of turkey and then I gradually increased the amount of turkey I put on the roll (Check out cookie butter for another alternative to Nutella).
Planning ahead is the secret to making school lunch prep quick and stress-free. Start by creating a “menu” of your child’s favorite lunches. Write them out, or let your child help, have them write the list, draw pictures, or even take photos (or find images online) to make it fun. This becomes your permanent lunch menu.
Each week, sit down together and have your child choose the lunches they’d like for the week. Not only does this create an instant shopping list, but it also turns busy school mornings into a breeze because the planning is already done!
The first step in making lunches for the week, is having a plan.
This makes shopping easier and limits the last minute trips to the grocery store!
Get your child involved as much as possible in the planning part,
THEY are the ones eating the lunch, not you.
Think of lunch making as a simple equation-Carbohydrate (cracker, chip, etc.) + Fruit and/or Veggie + Protein (lunch meat, nuts, diary, etc.) = a fed and happy child
Focus on themes or colors in their lunch. For the lunch below, my daughter wanted to do a rainbow theme. She picked out the rainbow goldfish, the color of the dried fruit roll pack, and the silicone cupcake liners.
Bento boxes! These serve so many different benefits for kids, especially kids who may be picky eaters!
1. They are visually pleasing
2. The food is separated (great if your kiddo is sensitive with foods touching each other)
3. Food can be removed from their original packaging and neatly stored
***picky eating tip- often times kids get stuck on specific brands of food items and it can be more difficult to expand their food repertoire to try new and similar items when they are too focused on the packaging
Variety is key to expanding your child’s food repertoire. Try not to pack the same lunch every day. A good rule of thumb is to wait at least two days before serving the same meal again. For example, if you pack dinosaur chicken nuggets on Monday, wait until Thursday to pack them again (Wednesday is okay for extremely picky eaters who only have a few preferred foods that they’ll eat).
