If you’re homeschooling your children by choice, or you’re doing so because of COVID-19 shutdowns, it’s a challenge. Homeschooling your children can be rewarding, but there are also a lot of things you have to overcome. One issue you may be facing is how to keep giving your kids healthy, nutritious snacks and meals while they’re spending so much time at home. The kids’ meals you feed your family, as well as their snacks, are what will fuel them to perform at their best level during their homeschool day, and the following are some tips and ideas.
1. Use a Meal Delivery Service
One option that can be convenient and perhaps a lifesaver, especially if you’re working from home at the same time as teaching or overseeing learning, is a meal delivery service. A meal delivery service will bring kid-approved, fresh, and prepared items right to your door. It eliminates the need to do meal prep, and if you go with a delivery service like Yumble, their items are specifically geared toward even the pickiest of eaters.
2. Create an Idea List
If your kids are a bit older and you want to take some of the work off your plate, you can create a list of meal and snack ideas, perhaps monthly or weekly. Stock the house with the items from that list, and then your kids can refer to it when they’re hungry. They can use it as inspiration to make their own meals and snacks based on what you have at home and what they’re in the mood for. You can make it part of your kids’ responsibilities to mark off any ingredient or food items that you run out of from the list, so you know when to replenish them.
3. Prep Snacks
You may already be meal prepping for lunch when you’re homeschooling, but don’t forget about snacks. Snacks are an important part of kids’ days and they fill-in nutritional gaps with items they might not get during mealtime. If you meal prep, make time to prepare snacks ahead of time as well. Packs of cut-up vegetables with dips are a good option, as are hardboiled eggs and muffins.
4. Get Inspired
The following are some ideas you can use as inspiration for lunch ideas when your kids learning at home:
- Cheese quesadillas on whole wheat tortillas
- Breakfast for lunch with things like scrambled eggs and pancakes
- Mini pizzas on pita bread
- Almond butter and jelly sandwiches
5. Choose Accessible Tools & Storage
Finally, when you’re making lunches and snacks for your kids during the homeschool day, there are some tools and storage containers that can make things easier. You can use mason jars to store items like soup, salads, or fruit and vegetables that you prepare ahead of time. Silicon muffin cups are a fun way to make dips accessible for fruits and vegetables. You can also use color-coded plates and Tupperware so kids can easily find the items meant for them.
It can be a bit of a challenge to also handle lunches and snacks when you’re homeschooling your kids, but with a little planning, it’s also more than possible.
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