Looking for a few new vegetarian bento lunch ideas to send to school for your kid? Check out these 5 fun and yummy ideas!
Hi friends,
My daughter recently started Kindergarten and coming up with vegetarian bento lunch ideas has been a chore and a half! I was not ready and often find myself scrambling at 10 at night to figure something out.
Now, we’re about a month and a half into school and I wanted share some of vegetarian bento lunch ideas with you that have been our biggest hits!
These vegetarian bento lunch box ideas are healthy-ish but are not the epitome of a “healthy” lunch. They are also cold lunches. I’m going to give a quick, real-life disclaimer here:
My main goal when sending lunch is for the child to eat the entire thing. The last thing we need is a child sitting in class trying to learn but can’t concentrate because they’re hungry. This means no, I don’t really send anything I know she won’t eat.
I fully understand that reintroducing a child to foods they don’t like is important.
That said, this is only ONE meal. There are still plenty of other opportunities at other meals/snacks to introduce things they aren’t into yet. This is also my same response to “Thats not a lot of protein/veggies/etc!”. Sure, maybe its not. But you didn’t see that she had a veggie omelet in the morning or that when she came home she had a protein smoothie or that she had bean and lentil chili for dinner.
Again, lunch is ONE meal and the goal is for it to be fun and enticing enough to be eaten entirely so that they won’t be hungry in class.
With that out of the way, here are 5 easy & yummy vegetarian bento lunch ideas!
Vegetarian Bento Lunch Ideas For Kids
1. Apple Rings
- Apple cut into 1/2 inch think rings w/ peanut butter & chocolate chips
- Hard boiled eggs
- Hummus (plain)
- Mini cookies
- Pita chips
2. Banana Roll Sushi
- Tortilla w/ peanut butter and banana inside
- Mini cookies
- Snapeas (salt)
- Goldfish
- Watermelon and blueberries
3. Nutella & Banana “Quesadilla”
- Tortilla w/ peanut butter, sliced bananas & chocolate chips (warmed in a pan – no butter)
- Watermelon and blueberries on mini skewers
- Goldfish
- Hard boiled egg
- Mini oreos
4. Vegetarian Sushi Rolls
- Veggie Sushi (seaweed, rice, avocado, cucumber & carrots)
- Hard boiled egg (bunny shaped)
- Watermelon
- Coconut Aminos (I mislabeled it! She likes this better since it’s kind of sweet. Soy sauce would obviously work too though)
- Fortune cookie
5. Banana Bagel
- Toasted bagel with Nutella spread, sliced bananas & cinnamon
- Pretzels
- Hummus (plain)
- Apples
- “Perfect Kids” Protein bar
Vegetarian Bento Lunch Must Haves
So, if you’re searching up bento lunch box ideas, I’m assuming you already have a bento box! In the event you don’t yet, I’m going to quickly list what box I’m using as well as a couple of must have for building a fun kids bento lunch!
1. Bentgo Lunch Box
This is the exact brand, style and print we have! My daughter loves it but there a ton of different prints available! We have the space rockets and dinosaurs ones too for my two younger boys! All of them are super vibrate and have held up very well so far since we first purchased them at the beginning of summer.
2. Mini Shape Cutters
I’m posting these ones because they are the exact ones I have for the sake of a fair review. These are great, we’ve had them over a year and use them regularly and they’ve help up very well. The green color on the star and heart has dulled a bit because they’re the two shapes we use most often. Other than that, they’re perfect!
I wanted to add a link to these ones as well because I plan on purchasing these next! They have a dog bone, a mini dinosaur and a butterfly! Omg. I need, but my lunch tool area is getting a bit crowded so I’m holding off till my birthday or something when I have an “excuse” lmfao!
3. Food Picks
I think these only show up once in the 5 bento lunch ideas here but we use them a lot! The kids love when I add the eyes to strawberries and I use the smaller picks to hold ham and cheese “rolls” together for my boys. We also use the longer picks as a mini “kabob” moment for fruit.
4. Hard Boiled Egg Molds
These are fun and super cute when they work! I think they’re mainly for rice but we like to use them for hard boiled eggs. Sometimes they work better than others.. It really depends on the shape and size of the egg you use.
Quick tip: Make sure the egg is still hot/warm when you place them in the mold. Then, add the entire mold with the egg still inside it back into an ice bath. If you try to do an egg mold on a cold hard boiled egg I can almost promise you it won’t show up.
