These sample daycare lunch menus are a perfect way to save time on meal planning and add new ideas to your menu!
If you are running a home daycare then you know it can sometimes feel like most of your day is just cleaning and cooking. Between the daycare and my own family, I sometimes felt like most of my life was spent in the kitchen cooking. On top of all the cooking, I also spent many hours every month planning and preparing those meals and snacks. In an effort to streamline my meal planning I started compiling spreadsheets of all the meals that I made. That spreadsheet became this list of sample daycare menus.
When I first started my home daycare I was gung-ho about meal prep. I actually liked planning my meals months in advance. But over time I got burnt out on all the cooking and menu planning. I ended up just cycling through the same meals over and over.
I was in a rut. A boring lunch menu rut!
Sample Daycare Lunch Menus for Home Daycare
To get me out of this boring lunch menu rut I began scouring the internet for ideas. I searched for sample lunch menus, meal planning ideas, and snack ideas for toddlers and preschoolers. The result was a 12-week lunch menu I am sharing with you today.
That’s three months of simple daycare lunch ideas, no duplicates.
I use this list as a master sheet of all the meals that I know my daycare kids like. Sometimes I just print the calendar out and use it as is. That gives me 12 weeks of meals planned and posted in two minutes. Other months I just use it to fill gaps in my daycare menu when I am trying new things.
Use the images as a guide to help you create your own daycare menus. You can even download my full sample lunch menus below.
Are you on the food program? Don’t worry. All the meals in my sample lunch menus should meet your food program’s requirements. And even if it doesn’t for some reason you can simply swap out something to make it work.
These lunch ideas are meant to be used as a guide. You can use them exactly as-is if you want but don’t hesitate to add or change things. These simple lunch ideas are here to help get you out of your meal planning rut. It also saves you time by offering new ideas to spice up your lunch menu.
I should note that only one or two of these meals contain fish. I have a daycare child that has had an allergic reaction to several types of fish. As a result, most of my sample daycare lunch menus do not contain fish proteins.
—-> Download my sample daycare lunch menus here <—-
Now the hardest part is making the meals. To save time and money some of the meals I make in large batches and then freeze for later use. Many times I will cook my proteins (chicken, ground beef, turkey) in bulk and portion out into ziplock bags to freeze. I can then just pull out the frozen cooked meat, let it thaw, and add it to meals.
I also frequently make double portions of our lunches that I will then use as dinner for my family that night. Or I will make a double batch of dinner and use that as our lunch the next day. That saves me the time of cooking another meal because I just have to reheat and serve. Easy!
PS- Don’t forget to track all the meals and snacks you serve to children as you can write this off on your daycare taxes!
Don’t see your favorite recipes for daycare lunches?
Share your favorite daycare lunch recipes with us in the comments! We love to find new meals and expand our database of yummy meals for kids!
Looking for more posts about running a daycare? Check out my daycare page to learn about starting or running an in-home daycare or shop my collection of ebooks and daycare forms in my store.
