The recipe prices will vary based on fluctuating grocery costs. Please use what is posted as a guide.
Here’s a list of 60 Lunch Ideas For Kids At Home. Use this list when kids are on spring or summer break for easy recipes to get lunch served quickly. There are even recipes easy enough that the kids can make themselves! Now, who doesn’t love that?!
Quick and Easy Lunch Ideas for Kids at home
Do you find yourself having a hard time knowing what to make for lunch when your kids are home? Tired of PB&J every day? Did you spend all your time planning for dinner, forgetting about lunch?
This happens to a lot of us. To help with this issue, we have the 60 BEST and easy lunch ideas for kids at home. These recipes range from healthy lunches, fun lunch ideas, quick recipes, and more.
Make a list and hang it up on your fridge to have easy ideas at your fingertips.
In most of these recipes, you will find that your older kiddos can make themselves, and the younger ones can help you. And the best thing is, these Lunch Ideas for Kids at Home are not just for kids! The whole family will love these easy lunch ideas.
How to get kids involved in their Lunch Foods
Ages 2-3: Using recipes to work on counting skills is a great idea! Most recipes have an aspect that can be turned into a counting game. A great example is something as easy as counting the number of pepperonis placed on top of a pizza. It is a fun way to be together in the kitchen and learn at the same time.
Ages 4-5: Look for opportunities to work with your child on math skills while making a recipe. You can introduce fractions to them while they measure out the ingredients. Or have them make a pattern out of apple slices, cucumber slices, and carrot sticks. This is an easy way to continue building on what they learned during the school year.
Ages 6-8: Reading a recipe is an excellent way to continue working on reading skills when school is not in session. They can help gather the ingredients and pre-measure them as they read the recipe.
Ages 9-11: Supervise them while they prepare the entire recipe. Remember to have them read it twice before beginning the recipe.
Ages 12+: Let them prepare the entire recipe, unsupervised, while you do the happy dance in the corner!
Budget tips for these Quick Lunch Ideas
Our goal with this roundup of easy at-home lunch ideas for kids was to gather kid-friendly, easy, and budget-friendly recipes. The recipes use easy-to-find ingredients that you most likely already have on hand, so they will not break the bank during the summertime.
Another great way to save on the grocery budget during the summer and help keep the kids from snacking all day is to make a filling lunch by using leftover meat from a previous dinner. For example, if we have leftover chicken, a great lunch idea the next day is chicken quesadillas.
What did we miss? What are some of your favorite lunches to serve your kids?
Easy Lunch Ideas FAQs
What’s for lunch? Every day during the summer, it is the dreaded question once the school year is over and the lunch boxes are put away for a couple of months. It is almost worse than being asked what is for dinner! There are no more school lunches to make, but we still need to make something for lunch. We are good at planning dinners every week but then not so great at planning lunches.
Short of having a sandwich or leftovers every day, we find we need more than one easy recipe on hand to make throughout the summer. So we created this monster list of easy lunch ideas to help make it a little easier. There is one less thing to think about with this recipe collection of easy lunch ideas throughout the week! Scroll through the list to find your favorites.
Kids get tired of the same old thing. So mix it up with some of the recipes found in our list. Our kids have their favorite foods like fresh fruit, hot dogs, cheese sandwiches, cheese quesadillas, homemade uncrustables, tuna salad, pizza rolls, bento boxes, a peanut butter sandwich, cheese roll-ups, mac, and mac cheese, chicken nuggets, and more for lunches. Our list has a delicious lunch idea for everyone, even those darn picky eaters.
Emily says
I love this list! These are great ideas for easy meals to get food on the table quickly, and the kids can help! Everyone loved the Air Fryer Grilled Cheese!
Kathleen says
All of these are fantastic ideas for lunches. The kids always want to help so your age appropriate list definitely comes in handy.
Irena says
These are so great, especially given the food prices lately. My daughter is not quite 2 yet but I can see quite a few things that she will like and also lots of things that I WOULD LIKE! Thanks for sharing.
Traci says
So many great recipes to choose from! I love you these for kids. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Dani says
The creamy mac and cheese sounds so convenient to make even with a picky sister that doesn’t eat anything but, dino chicken nuggets
Jess Jankowski says
Absolutely!! Kids of all ages love it!