Make the Best, Easy Bento Box Lunch for Kids

Grandma Sandy is on vacation, returning Wednesday, November 6. In the meantime, each week, we’ll feature a curated collection of the best of “Call Me Grandma!” In today’s post, we’re highlighting bento-making tips and tricks.

Bento of cherry tomatoes with eyes, carrot hearts, and heart-shaped sandwich.
Preschooler’s bento: cherry tomato people, carrot hearts, and mini heart-shaped panini sandwiches.

When Miss T was in preschool and hardly touching her brown bag lunch, I offered to make her a bento box lunch every Friday. I reasoned that she might like the variety, the smaller portions of little bits of food, and the cuteness.

Carrot slices are cut into flower shapes with a vegetable cutter.
Cut carrots into flowers with a vegetable cutter.

The secret is, my bento ideas aren’t difficult to replicate. Just cut foods like carrots or cheese slices with vegetable cutters, introduce a few decorative plastic picks, and you’re good to go. Eye picks are the best. They turn any food into funny characters–even broccoli!

A handful of plastic picks are used to make bento presentations more fun.
Handful of plastic picks: cats, trucks, ambulances, airplanes, dinosaurs, butterflies, hearts, eyes….

Use these ideas for more than school lunches. Bento boxes can make great after-school snacks, too.

Even The New York Times is on the bento bandwagon, featuring the bento box as a school lunch solution.

Tips for Making a Kid’s Bento Box Lunch

Bento box lunch features hot dogs cut into octopuses, strawberries, tomato wedges, and somen noodles.
Super-quick cooking Japanese noodles and cocktail franks turned into octopuses make this bento.

Learn how to make a few basic lunchbox items and try my cheater’s tips so you can repeatedly serve the same old foods, in new and fresh ways.

How to Make a Dinosaur Bento Lunch

This bento is dinosaur-themed, with a grilled cheese sandwich cut into a dinosaur shape and lots of dinosaur picks on the food.
Dinosaur picks roam the bento box; the brontosaurus is a grilled cheese sandwich.

This was a special dinosaur-themed lunch for N, who was well into his dinosaur stage. A selective eater, it was the first time he ate the whole meal. Learn how to make this bento box lunch.

Have Kids Make their Own Bento Box Lunches

Kids making their own bento. Just give them the ingredients and let them get to work!
The best bento is the one kids make for themselves, since it’s customized to their tastes.

This post outlines how you can have kids make their own bento. This is genius on a number of fronts: kids pick and choose what they want to eat so they’ll eat it, they learn to be creative with food, and they do all the work! Miss T was nine and N was six at the time.

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