Back to School Meals Made Easy
Now that school is back in session for most of us, it’s time to find a way to keep everyone fed between homework, practices, games, etc! It can become dinner time in a blink of an eye or that early morning soccer practice comes with the sunrise, and the family still needs to eat. So what do you do? Here are a few ideas to keep back to school meals made easy.
Planning
I can’t stress enough how important meal and schedule planning is for any family, especially when it comes to back to school! Everyone does it their own way, of course, whether you keep it on your computer, in a paper planner, or on a wall calendar. Once you know who needs to be where at what time, you can start planning around that for meal and snack times. For example, if your son has to be at school by 6 a.m. for swim practice, consider keeping easy breakfast ideas on hand, such as Cheerios®. Whether he eats them in a bowl with milk or out of a baggie in the car, he can eat a healthy and nutritious breakfast without having to take a lot of prep time.
Shopping
Once you have a better understanding of what your schedule will look like, you can begin your meal planning and shopping list. Consider shopping for a week at a time, so you aren’t always running to the store. Most families have a “staples” list of things they buy every week and then you change it up when you have something special to pick up. For example, when the family is only home for about a half hour between school and dance classes and football practice, fix up a few helpings of Totino’s® Pizza Rolls for the kids to help hold them over until it’s time for dinner.
Meals & Snacks
So you know what most of your days look like for the upcoming week and you’ve completed your shopping, right? Depending on when you have the time, and the ages of your kids, you may want to go ahead and break down a few of the bulk packages into easy to grab snack bags or storage containers. If you need to have 3 servings of cereal every morning, go ahead and measure them out into a plastic bag and group them together in the pantry or cupboard. Need to portion out frozen snacks for the kids to heat up when you’re not home after school? Separate them into freezer-safe containers so they can warm them up on their own.
Another idea, especially nice for those with multiple snacks/lunches to plan every day, is to add small boxes/containers into the pantry, one for each weekday. Then when it’s time to pack a lunch or grab a snack after school, you can reach into that day’s “box” and make quick work of lunch and/or snack time preparations! You could do the same in the fridge if you have the space too.
Lastly, be sure to keep extra snacks and meal ingredients on hand. These are great for when you end up running late, have an extra face at the dinner table, or Mom didn’t get to take lunch today and won’t make it until supper! Psst, for these I keep a box of the Fiber One™ Streusel in blueberry flavor in my purse.
Box Tops for Education
By writing down the family’s schedule and planning for meals and snacks, especially for those busy days and nights, you don’t have to worry about what to feed everyone. Plus, by shopping once a week you’re saving money by not having to stop at the store every day and buy more than what you needed.
On top of all this time and money you’ll save for your family? You can also save money for your kids’ schools by collecting General Mills® Box Tops for Education™ at Walmart. Each box top that is turned in for your school can earn them ten cents to use as cash, for whatever they need. Some schools use this money to pay for extra field trips, computers, classroom items and more! Plus, checks are sent out twice a year so purchases can be made in a timely manner.
For a limited time, you can buy products with bonus Box Tops for Education™ points on select General Mills® products at Walmart! Each item in the specially marked packages will be worth 5 box tops!! So that means you can earn the school 50 cents with each item you buy to help make back to school meals made easy.
Challenge!
Not only is back to school time a challenge for families with little ones to get better organized and on a schedule, it’s a great time to issue a friendly challenge to your friends and family to collect General Mills® Box Tops for Education™! Obviously we were collecting them in our own home, but we also talked to adult siblings, grandparents, and even friends at church who don’t save the box tops for themselves; we asked if they wouldn’t mind saving their box tops for our schools, so they could earn more money with this awesome program! We set up a few cute jars to make it easy, and then collected them at the end of the set time period so we could turn them in. It was all in good fun, but who doesn’t love a good contest? Feel free to print out our label to use for your own boxes and jars!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of General Mills®. The opinions and text are all mine.
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