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Balancing your lunchbox! #Hartleysyourlunchbox

Whether you’re thinking about back to school or nursery, or just planning a picnic with your little ones, lunch boxes are an essential part of parenting! Hartley Jelly are offering free lunch boxes to jelly eaters who collect 12 promotional lids! The lunch boxes are sturdy plastic, and come with a variety of stickers!

Lunchbox ideas for young children

I try to pack a healthy lunchbox, combining all the main food groups, but also including a treat! This helps me come up with more of an inspiring lunch than just a sandwich and a bag of crisps! I’m not great at presenting beautifully artistic lunches, so instead I focus on the food groups, and encourage the boys (aged 5 and 8) to help me prepare at least some of the lunches – this is especially helpful when you’re packing the fruit and vegetables! We have an electric egg boiler, so I can get “perfect” boiled eggs within 5 minutes, they’re a great source of protein and I find the days we pack an egg into the lunch box the boys seem brighter when I pick them up from school! One day I’ll invest in an egg mould and do fun shaped boiled eggs, but as yet I’ve not! I buy a large block of cheese and slice it into little fingers, as it’s cheaper than the sticks of cheese you can buy individually wrapped! Chunks of fruit (melon in this photo!), slices of vegetables (baby cucumber in this photo) and a carton of apple juice often frequent our lunch boxes. Instead of just making a sandwich, I slice a roll into multiple slices and create several mini sandwiches from one bread roll. By doing that I can either create different flavours of mini sandwiches, or just encourage a reluctant eater to eat more than he thinks he has! (Only half in this photo as the other half got eaten before I could photograph it..!).

Our school are quite strict on lunchbox content, and there are lots of things which they don’t allow, e.g. no tubes of yoghurt, no chocolate in any form (including cake and biscuits), no sweets, no fizzy drinks. So, in order to add a treat I have to think carefully, I tend to put a piece of cake or a small pot of yoghurt in, but the boys do get bored with the same things constantly! Hartley’s Jelly is now on our list for a lunchbox treat after my eldest announced that he forgot quite how much he loves jelly! The pots are a great size, and travel brilliantly they’re perfect for lunch boxes or picnics!

Lunchbox
Collect the lids for your free lunchbox!

This post is an entry for BritMums #HartleysYourLunchbox Linky Challenge, sponsored by Hartley’s Jelly http://www.hartleysfruit.co.uk/

One Comment

  • Kate Holmes

    I guess you can have some fun with the Summer holiday lunchboxes too with your own rules. Commenting for myself and on behalf of BritMums and thanking you for taking part