It’s that time of year when I’m at my BEST for planning lunches and snacks for school. I’m fresh, full of energy, and the kids haven’t yet worn me down with rejection and complaints LOL!
At my childrens’ school, they have two nutrition breaks plus lunch so I typically pack a bento-box style lunch and an assortment of snacks. While I’d love to say that everything is homemade, it’s a combination of store bought and home-prepped snacks. The waste from store bought snacks stresses me out, but I also try to be realistic about what the kids will eat and how much time I have to create lunches every night before school.
Healthy-ish Store Bought Snacks that I like to include:
- Black Diamond Cheestrings (marble)
- Chocolate Milk2Go for my son
- Sharp cheddar cheese cubes (KerryGold is a favourite with my 2 littlest..wish it weren’t so pricey!)
- Made Good cookies
- GoGo Squeeze applesauce pouches
- squares of dark chocolate (my littlest is pretty quirky with food!)
- Go Pure fruit & oat bars
- Dad’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
- Naan dippers
Homemade Snacks:
- energy bites (so easy to make and adjust based on the ingredients you have! see one of my favourite recipes below)
- cucumber slices and hummus or ranch to dip
- fruit mix of berries/cantaloupe/grapes
- salad
- hard-boiled egg, sliced (not always popular…)
- pasta salad (again, sometimes popular but now always…)
- Pumpkin granola bars (recipe below)
Recipes
For a while, I was buying the freshii energii bites but it was too expensive so I just get the ingredients from Bulk Barn (sunflower butter, medjool dates, oats, etc.) and make a bunch of energy bites on the weekend. You can sneak a lot of extra nutrition in such as hemp hearts, flaxseed and more. Plus, my kids will always eat them if they have chocolate chips!
Happy September!
Barre with Justine 
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