I think we can all agree that few things are more disheartening than watching your kid walk through the front door with the lunch you lovingly packed the night before completely untouched. Don't fret; this collection of easy lunchbox sides the kids will love may just reduce the number of days it happens throughout the school year.

Trust me, there's at least one dish in this roundup your fussy child is likely to absolutely adore. Oh, and did I mention that these are healthy and nutritious too?

ONE LIST

Five simple dinners. One grocery list.

No recipe hunting, no messy shopping notes, no complicated chef projects. Just family dinners that fit real weeks.

Get This Week's Plan

We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

1) Apple Slices With Cinnamon

The recipe is nice and easy to prepare, with just the ingredients. The main ingredients are spices and some lemon juice. A consideration would be that cinnamon can be quite strong, but if your kids like it, then fantastic.

An alternative could be an orange, or even easy peelers, so the kids don't actually have to peel off the skin themselves. Dust them with some cinnamon, and it's an extra treat. You could put in some really dark chocolate, because chocolate and orange go really, really well.

Strawberries Are the One Nobody Fights Over

What it actually is is strawberries cut up with a couple of tablespoons of yogurt, so effectively it's a yogurt but made with fresh strawberries. Nice idea to keep the yogurt separate in a separate pot. Again, you could repeat this with different fruits to add some variety, like blueberries or raspberries.

Simple, straightforward, easy to prepare, but possibly not for everyone.

3) Seedless Grapes

One thing I would say is that you need to make sure you cut all the grapes, not just for younger children, and they could be sharing them at school or sharing them with a friend. And grapes are a choking hazard, so that would be one point they need to pay attention to. Tightly packed, yet you can pack a lot into a small container.

Can Ranch Dressing Save a Vegetable’s Reputation?

So this is a great way to trick your kids into enjoying their veggies. It's cucumber and a little cup of ranch dressing. You could alternate the ranch dressing and try maybe Thousand Island dressing, or just some lemon mayonnaise, or some Greek yogurt for a change

5) Baby Carrots With Hummus

This is a classic, easy to do: just wash your carrots. If you could, baby carrots, leave them whole. If you've got large carrots, you can cut them into sticks.

Your hummus is ready to serve; put it in a small container with a lid, and the kids can just serve for themselves. Again, you can mix up different vegetables for this. We could try it with peppers; can you put some apple slices in there?

Really, anything that you think your children will eat.

Mini Sweet Peppers, No Fork Required

The mini sweet peppers looked really attractive if you can get hold of them. A nice, really easy-to-prepare suggestion: just cut your peppers in half or even pack them whole, pack a small ranch dressing, and I like the poof container; it's fantastic.

Just make sure it is leak-proof; again, you could try some different vegetables in there. Carrot sticks, cucumber, apple slices, celery, and, just to keep the interest going, try some different dips.

7) Watermelon Cubes

Watermelon cubes are really great for nutrition. They're low in calories but add hydration, as they're pretty much all water, and there's a little bit of fiber and some good vitamin C in there. Nice and refreshing to eat, and yes, cutting them up makes it better; cubes could even use a little cocktail stick to eat them for fun, or cut them into triangles.

You could put a dip as well, some natural yogurt.

Is Blueberry Yogurt Dip Really Worth the Extra Dish?

So, adding some yogurt dip to a packed lunch is a great idea. So you've got vanilla or plain yogurt, some fresh blueberries, some honey, and vanilla extract. So nice and natural.

You can swap the blueberries out for raspberries and other soft fruits that you can get, so you can still release the juice but have a few whole pieces in it. Love the idea of serving it with crackers.

And the kids love to dip things, so you have to make sure you've got some nice melon or some extra blueberries or some apple slices in there for dipping.

9) Cheddar Cheese Cubes

Most children love cheese, so pairing it with grapes or apple slices, which are optional, and pretzels adds a bit of interest to it. You could switch up the cheese. You could do different types of cheese.

“A lunchbox that comes home empty is a small, quiet answer to a mama’s prayer some days. String cheese has never once let me down.”

String Cheese: The Reliable One

This has to be one of the easiest things to throw into your kids' lunchbox: cheese strings, ready-to-eat and easy to eat. The light peeling and stringy bits add some grapes or apples as an option. The crackers are fantastic.

Again, you can put in some ham, some olives, some pickles if you get really creative and turn them up a little.

11) Whole-Grain Crackers

So here you're using whole-grain crackers rather than normal crackers, so you get nutrition from the whole grain and a spirit with some cheddar cheese and some apple slices. Here, I would suggest you could actually put it in a whole-grain wrap rather than a cracker.

Warm Up These Pretzel Twists Before Packing

These come out on busy school mornings when my boys need something crunchy beside their sandwich. They hold up well in a lunchbox for hours, and I like pairing them with cheese or a small cup of mustard on the side.

13) Mini Banana Muffins

Okay, this is a controversial one. Serving banana muffins and a lunchbox at lunchtime, it's almost said that there's a healthy thing to eat cake. I did say they are healthy, but do your children know that they're healthy?

But there's a nice, simple recipe that does contain sugar and butter and flour, as well as your mashed banana. You could also look at maybe making beetroot muffins, courgette muffins, or carrot muffins for some variety, but keep them on the small side.

Ants on a Log Never Go Out of Style

I'm loving this recipe; it looks fantastic. Interesting, kids will love eating it and talking about it. Get them to help make it as well.

The celery, and that's a hard one; not all kids like celery, and I've found that if you actually peel the celery, it takes some of that stringy bit off the outside, which you could try.

Your peanut butter and raisins, you could go for. You can maybe go for cream cheese or hummus and then decorate the top. So there are quite a few ideas we could actually expand on.

15) Peanut Butter Celery Boats

I like the peanut butter celery boats here. Again, you've got a nice crunchy salad. Like I said about the previous recipe, if you peel your salad, it takes away some of the stringiness.

You could change the peanut butter, and you can put hummus in it, or you could even put some chopped-up leftover chicken with some mayo in it, nice protein again.

You can swap in other things, maybe olives, not necessarily peanuts, some crunchy bacon on top. If it was chicken, again, you could also change the celery, and maybe do it on top of carrots, more like carrot sandwiches, or cucumber; scoop out the center of the cucumber and do a similar idea, like the boats. And yeah, you can have a variety of fillings going into them.

16) Hard-Boiled Egg Halves

It's a simple recipe really clear, and I like the fact that it says packed with an ice pack to keep the eggs fresh and not smelling too bad. Those are eggs. Hard-boiled eggs, when you heat them up, can smell pretty nasty, so you might want to pack something.

Yogurt, but super healthy, lots of protein, easy to prepare. Yeah, some crackers as well for a crunch.