Saturday, August 31, 2013

Snacks

I am curious.  Who else is required to provide daily snacks for their school age children.  In kindergarten everyone took turns so about once a month you are required to provide snacks for the entire class.  It wasn't too bad unless you forgot your day!

However, after kindergarten all elementary grades provide their own daily snack.  Every day I have to rummage up something healthy for snack.  It is either prepackaged stuff which is expensive, ziplock bags which seem a waste or containers which get reused (tried and failed to keep up with the containers).

I don't recall providing snacks for my older kids when they were little.  They had breakfast, lunch, snack after school and dinner.  When did this extra snack become necessary?  I now have to monitor my kids lunch online because they allow them to purchase chips and cookies with their lunch.  Then they get home at 3 and have a snack and we eat dinner between 5:30 and 6.

All these snacks are killing me.  All this junk food they let them buy is bothersome and another area that I have to monitor or they will just eat the junk food. Oh, and bananas are not a good choice.  Michelle left one in her backpack....for days.  Not so good.

So, do your school age kids need snacks at school?  If so, what do you send?

Note: on the weekends we don't do a morning snack but our lunch time is flexible according to when everyone tells me they are hungry.  We do an afternoon snack if it gets brought up and it isn't too close to dinner time.  Sometimes they are so busy playing they don't come in for food breaks.  However, they do a lot of water breaks.

8 comments:

  1. hear, hear!

    I don't agree with putting food in their little tummies all day long. The digestion needs a rest. In fact we need a few hours to digest our food before more is put in, or else digestion has to start all over again, every time.

    For my twins this actually makes the crabby.

    I am not sending extra snacks every day.

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  2. I will be dealing with the snack nightmare this year too. :/

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  3. When my older kids were in school there was no snack except in kindergarten. However; with the youngest they have snack time each day. He's in 3rd grade & each kid is responsible to bring their own snack. I have various things that he takes. I give him a small water bottle every day. For snacks he likes Carmel rice cakes; trail mix, dried fruit, cereal(I know that sounds odd but he likes it sometimes). I buy oyster crackers and make a huge batch of Hidden Valkey Ranch crackers. Have packed granola bars, a clementine or mandarin cause they are easy to peel, cheese sticks, it's a pain just packing for 1 I can't imagine having to pack for 4 of then

    Robin Reynolds.

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  4. My son goes to a charter school that has a longer day, so he gets two snacks and lunch. I pack his lunch every day, because the lunch at school is ridiculously expensive, and he's super picky anyway. I just add his two snacks in there. I usually send some sort of fruit, a cheese stick, gogurt (I can freeze those so by the time he eats it, it's thawed), a kids power bar thing, or crackers. In AZ they cannot sell junk food to elementary kids, so even in the public schools, that's not an issue. Of course, most schools can't tell the parents what not to send, so I had kids with crackers, chips and candy as their lunch. Made me crazy. Oh, to deal with the ziplock bags, I made my own fabric ones. They weren't too hard to make, and I can reuse them and throw them in the dishwasher when they get gross.

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  5. here it is a just kindergarten and that drives me crazy, I cannot imagine packing snack for everyone. I used to do a lot of cheese & yogurt till the husband went vegan and insisted the kids stop eating dairy. now that *is* hard. I'd have fits if they were buying cookies and chips.

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  6. I set out two choices for snacks in the morning. Usually a fruit and a crunchy snack--we got a case Kix Berry cereal on sale so that's often one. They can choose between the two. They are very good about bringing their baggies back to me. This year we are getting reduced hot lunch so we aren't dealing with it, but last year they were supposed to bring back the back that could be re used. Like almost everyday they had popcorn because Jessica would bring a big bag after the theater closed for the night. That bag could be re used for popcorn. Sandwich cookie bag could be re used for cookies. If they didn't bring me any back, I would drop off the dessert and tell them if they brought them back to use the next day, they'd get it again :)

    Most of the research indicates that kids should eat 5 smaller meal through out the day to keep up their energy rather than three larger meals. That being said, snacks are a pain. That's why now I just set out two choices. They get their used bag out of their backpack and pack their owns snacks. If they forget to pack one or get stubborn about it, they don't have a snack.

    You should be able to block their accounts from buying junk food. I sent the money week by week in an envelope. That way if it goes missing, they will have to pack their lunches. And I'm not stocking lunch type food this year so it will be a very boring lunch.

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  7. When the girls came to us they expected breakfast at 8am, then a 10am snack, lunch at 12, then a 3pm snack, then dinner at 5, then you guessed it another bedtime snack! I have no idea where this idea came from but because of this I provide small snacks and small meals now. Of course when they go to their visits every meal is fastfood ans sugary. We have to also provide snacks everyday for school because they go to a school without a lunch hour. No peanutbutter or juice boxes either! PIA! So it's cheesesticks, grapes, baby carrots animal crackers, pudding, granola bars. Once in a while I will add the 99cent lunchable because it has everything and it's actually cheaper that way... but I personally never had to include a snack when my biochildren who are 18/20 now were in school.

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  8. Oh gosh I hope we don't have to do that here. Do your kids like applesauce? My little ones love the ones that come in the single serve pouches. I stock up when they are on sale and they have a ton of flavors. They even have ones with veggies hidden in the mix.

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