My Daughter Is Staring Pre-school and She Doens't Really like Sandwichies Ideas?

Thermos Brand (can get at Target)Makes cute little soup containers that will keep soup warm till lunch I would bet. I think you could also test out chicken and rice and Pasta if you got it hot enough in the morning and put it in the thermos. Also...my toddler often doesn't care if it's not "hot" she'll eat pasta even if it's cold.

Maybe a Pasta Salad with chicken? some fruit on the side. Many of those insulated lunch boxes will keep fruit cool if you throw in a little one of those freezer ice things. That should keep things cool...the thermos will keep things hot. and the Thermos brand has cool kid designs on them.....also the thermos brand (they even have a sippy cup now) is BPA free...added bonus.

The thermos idea sounds great. Its easy to cut up fruit and vegies, maybe some cheese and crackers, also pieces of chicken finger size so that she doesn't need any spoon. She can have soup when she is at home. Cut up some bananas and mix raisens in. Try to make it look different each time so that she is interested in trying it. String cheese if fun to hold and munch on.

my daughter just finshed her last year of preschool.. we will miss it but time to move on :) what work great for us is a little thermos from target in the camping section. I put chicken nuggets in it. sometimes left over such as rice or even spagetti. also for other things I would buy at at cosco the apple pre sliced in sealed bags so they don't turn brown. Or I would freeze go gurt (yogurt tubes)
Best of luck
mom of a 5 year old and 2.5 year old.

My son, age 4, also prefers warm lunches, but those school cafeteria lunches are not exactly appetizing! So, we use an insulated bento box for a yummy, warm, home-cooked lunch.

As others have suggested, Thermos bowls to keep things like pasta and soup warm are nice. If you don't mind spending a bit (like ~$30 or so - I know, a bit spendy), there are terrific bento container sets at Uwajimaya in Beaverton (we Japanese are kind of fanatical about our lunches!). We have one that includes a tub-shaped container that's insulated to keep rice warm, but you could just as easily put warm pasta with sauce or thickish soup in it as well. It keeps stuff warm for at least 6 hours. The set also includes non-insulated plastic containers that are good for fruit and veggies, and, of course, a matching pair of chopsticks. :-)

For some bento ideas you could try, I did a quick Google on "bento ideas" and found this fun site:
http://www.c4vct.com/kym/bento/index.htm
called "My Lunch Can Beat Up Your Lunch"!

A.,

What about cold lunch meat, cheese and crackers (there are so many kinds and shapes) and grapes? Peanut butter crackers, milk and fruit cups made up early and put in little Ball(like the canning jars) plastic containers from Fred Meyers. I'm a huge fan of finger foods and there are lots of books written on them at the library with cool pictures too.

Happy lunch fixings!
G.