Kid food at home.

Seriously, I don’t know any homeschooling family who hasn’t put a great deal of thought into managing meals and snacks.  The ones I know personally are mostly natural-foodie, eat-your-veggies types.  And many, including myself, are just a wee bit prone to control-freak in general!  I was at a fellow homeschooler’s house last week; prominently displayed in the kitchen was a chart, MTWThF across the top, Breakfast Lunch Snack down the side, all filled in with different menus, the same every week, to simplify the decision-making.  This is not an uncommon solution, especially since it’s a timesaver too.  And how often have I heard, “I just don’t keep junk food around.  Otherwise I would be eating it all day.”  (Lots)

At my house, breakfast and lunch are informal affairs.  Most of the time we eat at the same time, but not always; and I serve them a very limited menu of quick-to-prepare, mostly vegetarian foods that I know they’ll eat cheerfully.  Oatmeal, toast, scrambled or soft-boiled eggs, occasionally whole-grain waffles or pancakes for breakfast; sandwiches, canned or leftover vegetable soup, quesadillas, English-muffin pizzas, occasionally noodles for lunch (always with a side of fruit or baby carrots).  I don’t keep any kind of low-nutrition snacks around at all, not even crackers; but the children plow through apples, oranges, and grapefruits all year long, and now that it’s summer, they are plowing through strawberries, blueberries, cherries, and watermelon as well. I see no reason to restrict their fruit intake, since nobody except me shows any sign of overweight.  

We have a sit-down “tea time snack” at three-thirty.  I instituted it to bring a little peace and happiness to the end of the school day, to give us another time block for storytime, and to fortify the kids against whining for food while I am cooking dinner.  If I try to be ambitious about it at all, I won’t do it — so “tea snack” is where I use pre-packaged things, usually better-quality granola bars, cookies, and crackers, served with a glass of milk and maybe some fruit.  Or I might offer them sweetened yogurt, or Jell-O instant pudding.  I’m going for something sweet, pleasant, and treat-y that contains a bit of protein to keep them full till dinner. 

When we have tribe days — days I spend with Hannah’s family or Melissa’s family or both — I bring something portable, crowd-pleasing, unmessy, and already-made.  Yesterday, I brought the children salami-and-neufchatel-cheese and peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches on whole wheat bread, served with natural applesauce cups.  The children sat around the table, but Hannah and Melissa and I ate standing and chatting in the kitchen.  I had something better for us:  Wasa crispbread crackers, neufchatel cheese, smoked salmon, and lettuce and tomato, some leftover tabouli, and raw sugar snap peas to munch on.  Sometimes the oldest girl, who is ten, joins us in our grown-up nosh, but yesterday was a peanut-butter day for her.  The tea snacks I bring these days are granola bars and fruit.  

Dinner is the time in our day for a carefully planned and prepared, balanced meal, for trying new foods and “practicing to like” the Brussels sprouts and okra, for tablecloths and folded napkins, for family conversations and passing the salt, please.  I know many homeschoolers strive for the family-meal atmosphere at all their meals; it’s not my style, though I appreciate and admire it.  Even though it’s the easy way, my way is quite structured too, and I’m pretty confident it’s working well for us.