Kids have to eat all. of. the. time.
I was an experienced babysitter and teacher in my life before I had my own kiddos, but I still didn’t understand the extent that kids eat until I had my own. When they’re babies their entire life (and yours!) revolves around when they eat. Then, as they become toddlers everything lives or dies around snacks. If you don’t have snacks you’re going to be in trouble!
I know they’re going to be eating even more as they grow and get bigger. I try to keep a balance of cost effective and healthy in our home. We don’t eat the cheapest thing just because it’s cheap and we don’t get the thing deemed the absolutely healthiest because it’s going to blow up the budget.
There’s a line I like to stay close to and it’s in the middle. With all of that said, there are are a few tried and true items that we eat all of the time for breakfast and lunch and they’re serious money savers!
Breakfast Ideas
Oatmeal
This is our breakfast of choice every single morning in our house! Both me and the kids eat some variation of oats. (check out some of our favorite oatmeal recipes here!) Right now, we’re loving basic brown sugar oats with frozen blueberries or raisins on top. So yummy and filling.
We go through about 2.5 pounds of oatmeal every 10 days. That ends up being about $7.74 a month to feed our family of 4 breakfast! You seriously can’t get much cheaper (or healthier!) than that.
Smoothie Bowls
Smoothie bowls are a super cheap and healthy kid friendly breakfast that we like (usually as a afternoon snack). We tend to have a couple of bananas that don’t get eaten before they start to over ripen, and I don’t always want to make banana bread. In that case, I throw them into a freezer bag and freeze them until we use them for a smoothie.
They make a great base for a smoothie and throwing in whatever other fruits and vegetables you find in your freezer is a great way to use things up and provide your kiddos with some yummy nutrients!
Banana Bread
On the same note as the smoothie bowls, banana bread is a wonderful way to use up older bananas and it costs basically nothing to make with the items from your pantry. For less than $2 you can make a whole loaf and feed your kids a yummy breakfast for a few days!
What not to do…
There are a few things that are absolute budget busters when it comes to kid friendly breakfast food. These are the things that I always stay away from.
- Pre-Packaged Anything… granola bars, instant oatmeal packets, individual wrapped cereal or pastries. If it has plastic around it, it’s not going to be good for your budget.
- Breakfast meat… we love breakfast meat around here, but breakfast just isn’t the time of day that I feel we get the most bang for our buck. A breakfast for dinner is much more satisfying and that way we’re not spending two times a day on expensive meat!
- Sugary anything. If my kiddos eat something sugary for breakfast, they are hungry again within MINUTES! We try to avoid all things super sugary in general, but especially at breakfast.