How We Do Homeschool Lunch
I’m going to set a timer and see if I can get this post sent off in 20 minutes. Ready? Go!
I thought it would be fun to give mini glimpses into our homeschool day. If your family is anything like mine, food is a major part of your day! I didn’t realize how important the food was to a successful homeschooling day before we jumped in. I took for granted that I would be feeding these people 3x/day 7 days a week. That was a big leap from just 2 times a day with the kids in school doing the hot lunch thing pre-COVID.
With several young kiddos in our homeschool, it is important that I need to be available for a good chunk of one-on-one instruction for language arts and math. When it came to scheduling lunch, I had a tough time finding a pocket when I would be available for food prep. Enter the big kids! For the past few years, Jane and Walter have made lunch.
The way things are set up this year is working really well. While Jane (13) and Walter (12) work on food prep, the littles (4 and 2) watch some Bluey in the family room, Harry (10) does some independent reading, and I do math with Dorothy (7).
Jane and Walter seem to enjoy their time in the kitchen. After a few years of having complete freedom in there, they’ve picked up some solid skills! They know how to operate all of the kitchen appliances, have basic knife skills, can boil a pot of water, can safely strain a pot of pasta into a colander, can safely remove hot items from the oven, and can plate a meal for 6 kids + mom on time 5 days a week. Hooray!
As the big kids, Jane and Walter enjoy having a time of day when they are free to reign without micromanagement. Jane usually listens to an audiobook and gets into a veggie and fruit chopping flow while Walter tackles the main dish and drinks. The classroom shares a wall with the kitchen, so I can regularly hear Walter singing while Bluey plays in the background.
We really pared down the menu with simple, easy to make items. I typically have a spring mix salad with fresh veggies, hardboiled eggs or chicken, cheese, nuts (pepitas or sunflowers), and a vinaigrette dressing. The kids’ main dishes are things like PBJ, deli meat sandwiches, sloppy joes, pasta with rotisserie chicken or frozen meatballs, or Elvis burritos (peanut butter, sliced banana, drizzle of honey, crumbled bacon on a tortilla or flatbread). I told you it was simple! The sides are a cheese stick, veggie, and a fruit. For veggies, we usually have baby cucumbers, petite carrots, sliced bell peppers, broccoli spears. We serve them raw with a choice of ranch, hummus, or tzatziki (cucumber sauce). For fruit, we rotate through our menu of what’s in season. To drink, the kids get water or milk, and I get a tall glass of Citrucel. (Getting old is something else, people!)
We are able to sit for a solid half an hour before a quick tidy and heading outside together for afternoon recess. I’ll share more on our after meal jobs another time.
Don’t be afraid to get those big kids into the kitchen if you haven’t already! I love it for several reasons: it’s a great breather from their homeschool work, they gain solid kitchen skills, they get more invested in the meals, they learn problem solving, they become more grateful for the food not prepared by them because they realize the time & skill necessary to make it. Everyone loves it as a family because it keeps the homeschool day shorter than it would be if I had to make the food plus find another pocket of time for the one-on-one math session with Dorothy.
I think that about covers it, and my timer just went off. What did I forget? How does lunch work for you and your crew?