Easy Ways to Make Lunch More Fun
We eat with our eyes first. It's true for adults at a nice restaurant and it's just as true for a seven-year-old opening their lunch box at a cafeteria table.When something in their lunch looks interesting, funny, or a little unexpected, they're far more likely to actually eat it.
Here are some of our go-to tools and tips for making cute fun lunches.
Cookie Cutters
Small cookie cutters punch through sliced cheese beautifully, and also work well with summer sausage, bell peppers, apples, kiwi, cucumber, and sometimes strawberries depending on the size. Letter cutters are especially fun - spell out their name, a joke, or a little message.
The Crinkle Cutter
Use it to chop carrots, cucumbers, apples, cheese, dried mango or even a hard bodied egg and suddenly everything looks a little more interesting. Sometimes a different shape is all it takes to get a kid to eat a vegetable they'd otherwise ignore. If you don't have one yet, ours comes in a three-piece prep set designed specifically for lunch packing, and it's currently on sale.
Skewers
For some reason, food on a stick is just more fun. Fruit flowers, cheese and veggie kabobs, or a simple mix of whatever you have on hand. Kids will eat things off a skewer that they'd normally push to the side on a plate.
Kitchen Scissors
One of the most underused lunch-packing tools. Kitchen scissors make quick work of cutting fruit leather, cheese, salami, or deli meat into shapes, strips, or bite-sized pieces without pulling out a cutting board. Snip fruit leather into zigzags, cut salami into a spiral, or use them to trim a piece of cheese into any shape you want. Fast, easy, and surprisingly satisfying.
Candy Eyeballs
Order a bag online and keep them in the pantry. Stick them onto fruit, veggies, cheese cubes, or sandwich halves for an instant silly surprise. This one requires almost zero effort and makes lunch fun every time.
Apple Corer
Core an apple, then slice it horizontally into rounds. Each slice looks like a little donut. Spread peanut butter on top and add sprinkles. That's it!
Straw Punch-Outs
The end of a stainless steel straw or the small metal circle end of a piping tip works as a punch-out tool. Use it to make polka dot patterns, or punch out little circles to create eyes and a mouth for a face in a slice or cheese or a mini sweet pepper. Low effort, high impact.
Melon Baller Beyond Melons
A melon baller isn't just for melons. Use it on kiwi, dragon fruit, or papaya for perfectly round little spheres that look like they belong in a fancy fruit cup. Kids find the shape surprisingly appealing.
Quesadilla Cut-Outs
Before assembling your quesadilla, use a cookie cutter, kitchen shears, or a clean craft knife to cut shapes out of the top tortilla. Keep the bottom tortilla whole so the cheese stays put. When it's cooked and cut, the shapes let the melted cheese peek through in all the right places.
Colored Cream Cheese
A swipe of cream cheese on a bagel or sandwich suddenly becomes a lot more exciting when it's bright pink or electric blue. Mix in a few drops of food coloring, or grind freeze-dried fruit into a powder and stir it in for a naturally tinted, subtly fruity version. Blue spirulina powder makes a surprisingly vivid blue that kids love.
The PB&J Window
Use a cookie cutter to cut a shape out of the center of the top slice of bread before assembling your PB&J. When you place it on top, the jam shows through like a little stained glass window. For an extra special touch, add colorful sprinkles into the jame window.
Sprinkles & Seeds
Don't underestimate either of these. A sprinkle of colorful sprinkles on an open-faced peanut butter or cream cheese bagel turns a plain snack into something that feels a little celebratory. On the savory side, sesame seeds, hemp seeds, or everything bagel seasoning scattered over veggies or hummus adds visual interest and a little extra flavor.
Hot Dog Octopus
This one has been delighting kids for generations and it still works.
Cut the hot dog in half crosswise. On the cut end slice the hotdog lengthwise about halfway up to create 8 legs. Drop it into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds. The heat curls the legs up into a little octopus shape.
Go All In With a Theme
If you really want to make a lunch memorable, pick a theme and go all in. The under the sea lunch above is a perfect example of what's possible when you pull a few of these tricks together. Here's what's going on in there:
A bagel half becomes a beach scene - cream cheese, crushed graham crackers for sand, and a strawberry crab with candy eyeballs sitting right in the center. Hot dog octopuses nestle into a bed of lettuce like they're swimming. Shell-shaped pasta is tossed with star-shaped bell pepper pieces for an instant ocean floor vibe. Goldfish crackers get their own little compartment because of course they do. Ocean inspired candies for a treat, and in the granola section, a grape and kiwi turtle peeks out from the corner.
Every element ties back to the theme and most of them use tricks from this very list. Your kid's favorite animal, movie, color, or season all work just as well as a starting point. Save a themed lunch for a birthday, the first day of school, or just a random school day when they need a little something extra.
