Ella starts pre-K today. Only we’re not in town, so she’s missing 3 days and starting next week. The teachers don’t mind for this age. I hope in the coming years we can work out our schedules to keep the teachers happy. We always have traveled in September and October.
At Ella’s school they are requesting that we send paper sack lunches. I’m really unhappy about that because I wanted to get a cute lunchbox for Ella. Also because all of the cute, creative lunch ideas I see are in Bento boxes. Ella has never been interested in eating, so anything I can do to encourage her to actually EAT the food I send is good.
I’ve been seeing all kinds of fun posts on ideas for school lunches. Here’s a favorite I saw today from Obento Mama:
How cute is that? And why can’t I ever come up with clever ideas like this on my own? This Mom has 3 kids—one a newborn—is in school herself, and still gets this cute lunch accomplished. I’m feeling a bit jealous of her creativity and trying to remember to not compare myself to others. I AM a good Mama, even if my daughter’s school lunches are boring. 
Obento Mama shared this great site with me: Biting the Hand the Feeds You. They share ideas for disposable Bento boxes in one of their posts. I think a lot of the ideas here can work for Ella’s sack lunches. I especially like idea of using strawberry cartons or egg cartons for a disposable bento box. The many clever ideas are shared in this post on eco-friendly disposable lunches.
Here’s one more that my fabulous source at Obento Mama shared with me. This one I KNOW Ella would gobble right up. It’s posted at BentOnBetterLunches.com and it is absolutely perfect for the airplane. Really, you would pay $10 for something like this (if they even had it) in the airport. Isn’t it nice?
We fly back home next Monday and I’m going to mimic this lunch for our flight home. I’m sure it will be a hit.
What about you? Are you sending school lunches in a lunchbox or in a sack? What do you use for inspiration?
