9 School Lunch Ideas to Fill Up Your Teen or Tween

This summer my girls and I have been on a mission. Our mission was to come up with new school lunch ideas.

Our lunches had become so mundane and boring. I’m sure you know the rut. So, I came up with a new menu planning idea (which I will share with you soon). With this method of meal planning, it allows me to plan way ahead and to use Pinterest to add new variety to our meals. It has worked out really well!

The other problem we had with lunches was that our old school lunches were not filling enough for my teen and tween. They may be girls, but they still are eating me out of house and home as they grow. I needed new lunch ideas that would actually fill them up.

Today, I’m sharing 9 of our favorite new school lunches. Hopefully, it will help you fill up those lunch boxes and growing bodies as well. 

First up is an idea that we have used a little bit differently. We use the Sandwich thins and I send 2 of thins along with all of the toppings in this lunch box pizza. By using the sandwich thins, it is enough to fill up my girls.

This is a meal that I love to make. It is so super easy! I generally make these Chicken Pesto Sandwiches (affiliate link) as a dinner. It is a freezer cooking meal, which makes dinner time so much easier during the school year. In this case, I put the second meal in the freezer in individual portions. and we use it for easy and filling lunches.

While I realize that not all teens and tweens will go for the cuteness of these bagel pizzas, they are super filling and you can skip the cuteness if your child no longer likes that in their school lunch.

We tried these Crunch Cresent Nacho Dogs recently and they were so easy to make and everyone really enjoyed them. They were also pretty filling so they will be making the lunch box rounds this year.

I totally did not expect my kids to like this Greek Salad, but they sure did.  Perfect quick and healthy school lunch.

These pizza rolls are another super easy lunch to make. We added a few of our favorite turkey meatballs into them to make them a little bit more filling. Just make sure you dice or cut any filling up small so that it rolls well.

Another salad I wasn’t sure if my girls would go for or if it would be filling, but they loved and it and found it filling. I do often do a small hunk of a baguette with our salads, it kind of makes it feel like a salad from Panera that way and helps add something other than chips to the lunch to fill them up.

We tried to have variety and not just sandwiches, be we did throw a few sandwiches into our trials this summer. This Apple Cheddar Grilled Cheese made the cut as it was delicious and filling.

We have done variations kind of like this Burrito Bowl in our school lunches before, but the addition of the salsa sauce in this recipe makes it amazingly delicious.

Bonus School Lunch Ideas:

I realize that most of our kids pack and make their own lunches, but that doesn’t mean we can’t sneak a fun little note in occasionally. My daughter (I have one in school and homeschool my other daughter) may be in High School, but she still loves it when I put a note in her lunch box.

I love this lunch planner! It will help you and your tween or teen stay on track with packing lunches. While it may be a little cutesy for the older set, I love that you can customize the meals and make the whole thing re-usable. Might figure out how to add something like this to my command center.

Hope you enjoy all these great school lunch ideas! I’m going to try to post additional lunches try on my Facebook page, so follow me over there so you don’t miss any more ideas.