39 School Lunch Ideas

With the fall quickly approaching, it's a good time to start saving a few school lunch ideas for when you need to get packing. One of our favourite ways to pack lunches is in a bento box. They're great for little hands, perfectly portioned and practical. All you have to do is fill the largest compartment with a combo of proteins and carbohydrates, and use the smaller ones for fruits, vegetables, snacks, and sauces or dips. We've come up with 8 lunches (with a total of 39 different items in them) so that you can mix and match your way throughout the school year!

This bento is as basic as it gets and will please even the pickiest of eaters. We've included our waffle grilled cheese sandwich (for variation use mozza in place of cheddar and add spoonful of tomato sauce to the filling to make a pizza-flavoured bite), rainbow pepper strips, fresh blueberries, and a few of our favourite cocoa date ‘truffles' or oatmeal power balls for an a little sweet treat to finish off the meal. (Just skip the nuts to make them school-safe!)

For kids who aren't keen on sandwiches, consider packing up these chickpea patties in lettuce cups. Serve with a side of sliced garden veggies, blue plums, yogurt-covered pretzels and banana chips. For extra flavour, include a side of lemon-dill dipping sauce for the patties.

These baked black bean quesadillas are a quick-cooking, filling and nutritious midday meal. Serve with mini cucumber sticks, peach and plum slices, and heart-shaped spelt cookies for a vegetarian meal that will leave your kids smiling.

Simple pastas are an excellent way to bulk up a school lunch, and when tossed with healthy ingredients like broccoli you're left with a meal you feel good about serving. Add some multi-coloured grapes, dried mango slices and a few chocolate cookies and this will easily become one of your child's favourite weekday lunches.

Save some of last night's supper for lunch and pack a sandwich of roast chicken on a pretzel bun with lettuce and a drizzle of ballpark mustard. Corn coins, kiwi fruit and chocolate covered sunflower seeds make this a meal the kids surely won't skip.

Say ‘Ole!' with this Mexican-inspired lunch made of baked turkey taco triangles, roasted tomato salsa, cheese, avocado and cherry tomato salad, cubes of watermelon and mango, and a sweet snack of pumpkin seeds and mini chocolate chips.

Our classic Parisian platter lunch is perfect for packing into bento-style lunchboxes. Choose an assortment of your favourite foods from a variety of categories (we've selected hard-boiled eggs, cheese, crackers, oranges, green beans, chocolate and dried fruit) to create a picnic-like lunch that will delight anyone with a pickier palate.

This colourful lunch is a cinch to put together and is made up of kid-friendly lunchbox favourites like our popular turkey and cheddar cheese roll-ups, apple and pear pieces, rainbow carrot sticks and classic animal crackers. For variation, try replacing the turkey and cheddar with ham and Swiss or prosciutto and provolone.