Easy Snack Box Formulas: 24 Snack Ideas for the Whole Family

Snack time just got a whole lot easier with these three simple snack box formulas for the whole family – especially toddlers. Grab your free printable snack box menu with 24 ideas too!

Snack Time Struggles

Snack time can be such a struggle.

I have found that I struggle with 3 main problems when it comes to both me AND my kids and snack time:

1. all day snacking
2. managing junk food cravings
3. coming up with snack ideas

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The Solution for All Day Snacking

I’ve found the solution to all day grazing on Goldfish crackers is to utilize these 4-compartment bento style snack boxes. This helps provide a more balanced snack.

With these, instead of just providing a big bowl of crackers, the layout of the snack box tray sort of forces you to provide more options. Now, you can provide crackers, cucumber sticks, apple slices, and some cheese, for example. Much more filling!

Managing Junk Food Cravings

Historically, I’ve used the snack boxes like this: a carb, a protein, and two fruits or veggies, but I realized after awhile that this formula wasn’t accounting for snack cravings. You know, the stuff that we all crave on occasion, like chips and salsa or cookies.

I used to (as a first time newbie mom) be so strict with limiting junk food consumption to ‘never’ for my toddler, because there is oftentimes very little nutritional value in junk food, obviously. After all, it’s not like they need chips or cookies in order to grow and thrive.

However, something that I am constantly working on is reminding myself that sometimes we eat food just because it’s fun and tastes good to eat.

Unhealthy Relationship with Food

This lesson became more apparent then ever when I recently tried to start eating more mindfully – more nutrient-dense food – and failed miserably. Unfortunately, in trying to eat ‘healthy’, it only led to overly restricting junk food, which in turn, led to giving up on healthy eating altogether. Sigh.

I know we have all been there at some point and that it is incredibly frustrating to deal with. I don’t have the healthiest relationship with food, and I know I am far from alone in this struggle.

While I will continue to work on this, what I don’t want is for my kids to develop those same habits around food, the mentality of food being labeled as good or bad instead of food just being food.

A Solution for Junk Food

As I was brainstorming ways that I could find a healthy balance for myself (and for my kids), I came up with the idea of just incorporating the foods we need (fruits, veggies, proteins) and the foods we love (chips, cookies, crackers) into our every day snack boxes.

I figured this would be a good way to eat more nutrient-dense foods and also still enjoy the foods we all love and crave, just in moderation as the snack box compartments aren’t large – the snack box serves as a good guide for portions.

Coming Up With Snack Ideas

I wanted to simplify our snack routine and take a lot of the focus / obsession around food, off of my plate (no pun intended).

I also wanted a way to ensure that we were all getting a wide variety of food options – not just eating the same 3 fruits and vegetables every week.

RELATED: Check out this delicious Banana Sprinkle Pop recipe – the EASIEST healthy snack idea that tastes like a dessert!

We needed to start getting used to eating a variety of healthier options and breaking free from our comfort zone of our ‘safe’ foods. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that sometimes, we get in such a habit that we almost forget that other fruits or veggies exist, in a way.

For example, we’ve been buying strawberries and blueberries for months now, every single week. We are all sick of them, honestly. I realized when creating these formulas that I couldn’t even remember the last time I ate honeydew or cantaloupe – and I know that my youngest child had never even been exposed to them.

Like, what?! I love these fruits and I want my children to enjoy them too… but I often get so stuck in my routine that I don’t even pause to consider other options. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day mental load and just forget things like this.

The Solution to Snack Issues

So, in an effort to find a solution to these three issues: all day grazing, overly restricting (or overly eating) junk food, and struggling to come up with ideas, I came up with three easy Snack Box Formulas.

Snack Box Formulas

I decided on three Snack Box Formulas that each have eight options. This means, that I’ve got 24 options to pick from when making snacks for our family.

The three snack box formulas are:

1. The Breakfast Snack Box
2. The Dipper Snack Box
3. The Snacky Snack Box

Let’s break each one down…

The Breakfast Snack Box

For The Breakfast Snack Box, it follows the formula:

• yogurt (or cheese or hard boiled egg – aka protein)
• breakfast-y carb (like mini muffins, dry cereals, homemade granola, etc.)
• fruit
• fruit

Consider this snack box your ‘second breakfast’ snack box. If you don’t like yogurt, that’s fine. You can instead use cottage cheese, other cheeses, or a hard boiled egg as your protein source.

This one is my favorite snack box and we eat this one for our morning snack almost every day.

Here are the 8 Breakfast Snack Box options I’ve come up with:

These Chocolate Banana Mini Muffins by Ambitious Kitchen are for sure in my top 5 for favorite muffin recipes. I like to make them in a mini muffin pan – if you choose to do so, I typically bake for around 10-15 minutes.

The chocolate sprinkles added into the yogurt make dipping the strawberries taste like chocolate covered strawberries. Yum!

RELATED: Here FIVE of my go-to make ahead breakfast muffin recipes!

These Banana-Zucchini Muffins by I Am Baker are another favorite that get made frequently in our house! One thing I love about all muffin recipes, is that they can be made in bulk and frozen to be enjoyed later.

I often will make a double batch and freeze a bunch. For thawing, I just pull however many we need out of the freezer and into an airtight container in the fridge overnight. By morning, they are ready to be eaten and taste exactly the same as the day they were made.

Have you tried this Kashi Cinnamon Harvest cereal yet? It’s SO good. I usually put half a serving in our snack boxes. Each half-serving contains 3g of fiber and 3g protein – not bad for cereal!

How cute are these Banana Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins by Build Your Bite?! I could eat these every day. They are super easy to make and a favorite with my two kids.

RELATED: Looking for more muffin recipes like this one? Check out my Five MORE Make Ahead Muffin Recipes blog post.

If you’ve never tried making homemade granola before, here’s your sign to give it a go. This Homemade Peanut Butter Granola by Joy Food Sunshine is made with just a few staple ingredients and can last up to two weeks (although ours never does, haha!).

Did you notice how I cut the bananas here? Sometimes changing the way fruit or veggies are cut, sparks renewed interest in a food.

RELATED: Try this Peanut Butter Granola + Banana Parfait Idea! It’s delicious!

This Homemade Cranberry-Vanilla Granola by Favorite Family Recipes has been a favorite of mine for years before even having kids. Warning: it’s extremely addicting. For this recipe, I make 1/4 of the written recipe (the recipe calls for 8 cups of oats, I make mine with 2 cups, etc.).

These freeze dried fruits are big time favorites with my kids. I love the ones sold at Aldi and find that they have the best prices around for freeze dried fruit.

Here is a super easy Breakfast Snack Box idea – cheerios, fruit, and yogurt – but make it fun! Adding in rainbow sprinkles is a fun touch that the kids will appreciate.

Also, using a melon baller to scoop the cantaloupe, for example, can spark new interest (similarly to how I showed the diced bananas). It might seem insignificant, but presentation often makes a big difference when it comes to feeding kids (and yourself).

These Nature’s Bakery Fig Bars are what we’ve been eating lately in place of cereal bars. They are hearty (and can get pricey), so I usually will serve one bar (which is half a package) per person. Two bars (a whole package) is 200 calories, for perspective.

For pineapple, we love using this pineapple corer for easy cutting!

The Dipper Snack Box

For The Dipper Snack Box, it follows the formula:

• dip
• crunchy snack
• veggie or fruit
• veggie or fruit

For this snack box, you are going to add in your favorite crunchy snack and dip combo, like pretzels with hummus, chips and chip dip, etc. The added vegetables will provide volume and make the snack box more filling, while providing the benefit of nutrients and fiber.

This snack box isn’t likely to be as heavy on the protein as some of the others, but it’s all about balance here, that 80/20 rule (healthier options 80% of the time). Sometimes you just need a little crunchy snack and dip to satisfy a craving.

Here are the 8 Dipper Snack Box options I’ve come up with:

I love that these cream cheese wedges come in so many different flavors. For kids that are just getting used to them, I’d recommend trying plain flavored first – but these garlic and herb ones are delicious. They are more affordable at Aldi vs. the name brand Laughing Cow.

Mmmm… who doesn’t love chips and salsa?! I’ve found that peppers and celery taste good dipped in salsa too and pair well with tortilla chips.

Here is an easy way to enjoy a food most of us love (chips and dip), but made a little more filling with the volume of the veggies added in.

You can see, in this example, how the snack boxes naturally create an easy portion size for the chips – even if you filled the chip spot a second time, it still would be more controlled in comparison to a whole bowl or eating out of the bag.

My kids are obsessed with this snack box. They’d probably eat it daily, if I let them.

It can get quite messy with younger kiddos, but if you can get past the messiness that sometimes occurs – this is a great option!

*As with any food, be careful with globs of peanut butter being a choking hazard. You want to encourage dipping snacks in vs. eating the glob of it whole.*

This is one of my favorite Dipper Snack Boxes. My current hummus obsession is the Roasted Red Bell Pepper Hummus from Aldi – affordable and delicious.

This is definitely an ‘in moderation’ snack box, but come on, who doesn’t love a little queso every now and then?! I’ve found that bell pepper strips and celery sticks pair well with this snack box.

Pretzel thins are always a big hit and a little easier for toddlers to eat. These are my go to dipping pretzels… while I don’t love dipping in Ranch (I prefer hummus!), my kids do love this.

With any veggies + dip, you can pass judgements about the nutritional information – but anything that encourages vegetable eating is a good thing in my book! Adding the dip doesn’t make the veggies less healthy – it just makes them more appetizing and the kids more used to eating them.

Here is my favorite yogurt dip! I make it almost every week and prefer to use this in place of plain peanut butter for apple dipping.

It’s so easy – I usually double this recipe and we eat it all week.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Greek vanilla yogurt
• 1/3 cup peanut butter, creamy

Instructions:

1. Mix the two ingredients together until creamy. Store in an airtight container in the fridge. Use the dip for pretzels, graham crackers, fruit, etc. or eat plain with a spoon.

The Snacky Snack Box

For The Snacky Snack Box, it follows the formula:

• favorite snacky food
• protein
• fruit or veggie
• fruit or veggie

Consider this snack box the snack box that fulfills all of your junk food cravings. The difference here, is that you are able to eat your favorite snacky food, but you’re learning to pair it with protein (so it’s filling) and fruits/veggies (again, so it’s filling, but also to expose everyone to fruits/veggies).

This allows everyone to eat their favorite junk food snacks guilt-free, but also it’s teaching everyone to eat more than just junk as a snack. The size of the snack box compartments helps act as a reminder about better portion sizes (something I greatly struggle with myself).

Here are the 8 Snacky Snack Box options I’ve come up with:

For this snack box – I’d obviously swap out the Z Bar for the adult version. For me, I’d add in a granola bar or protein bar.

Instead of deli slices of turkey – give these turkey sticks a try.

With this snack box, don’t forget that there are multiple flavors of string cheese that you can swap out for – the colby ones, cheddar ones, etc.

Have you tried these Organic White Cheddar Puffs from Aldi yet? They are addicting! My two year old really loves them right now. I often find these Baybel cheeses from Aldi too, at a discounted price.

Veggie straws are a good alternative to regular chips – they taste very similar but are a little more healthy to eat.

My kids are hooked on these Bamba Peanut Butter Puffs, however, they aren’t ones that I would eat, as an adult. For this snack box, I’d just add in my favorite chips, puffs, popcorn, or crunchy snack.

Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs Every Time Recipe:

Ingredients:

• Eggs

Instructions:

1. Place eggs in the bottom of a pot.
2. Fill the pot with cold water until the water is just a bit over the eggs.
3. Bring to a high boil.
4. Let boil for about 15 minutes.
5. Once the 15 minutes is up, turn the heat off, put on the lid, and set the timer for 15 minutes again.
6. Once the timer is up again, remove the lid, drain the water, and run a bit of cold water over the eggs, just so you are able to handle them properly.
7. Peel easily!

Here is another example of doing the same fruits, veggies, or protein sources – but changing the cut. Instead of rolled turkey slices, try dicing them up. Instead of fruits and veggies cut with a smooth knife, try a crinkle cutter.

I love this kid’s kitchen knife set and it includes a good crinkle cutting tool.

This snack box shows off my favorite ever Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe by Pinch of Yum – you’re welcome. Ha! They are so good – I like making them with a mini muffin scoop so they are small. They fit perfectly in these snack boxes.

Snack Box Menu

I wanted this to be as easy as possible, so I decided to have these options available for saving as a PDF or printing out – to be used like a menu in a restaurant.

When planning your grocery list, you can pull out your Snack Box Menu and buy what you need. Then, at snack time, you can present whichever options to your kids or just use the cards yourself and make an easy decision.

I made a ‘Notes’ section just below each image where you can jot down ideas that are tailored to your own tastes if the picture isn’t the exact match that suits your cravings.

For example, my kids will be eating the Bamba Peanut Butter Puffs (they’re obsessed) featured in the Snacky Snack Box #5, but I will not – those are a kid thing, in my opinion, so I’d write a little note on that one like ‘popcorn for mom’ or something. This helps eliminate decision fatigue on your end.

You can also use this section to jot down different brands/foods within the category to make shopping easier or where to find your favorite muffin recipe, for example.

Click HERE to get your free PDF printable Snack Box Menu.

I recommend printing the 24 pages, sticking each of them in a page protector, and putting them all in a binder in your kitchen.

Happy Snacking!

I hope that you’ve found this post helpful. If you enjoyed these snack ideas, be sure to follow me on Instagram where I share a lot of snack and meal ideas plus overall tips for life as a stay at home and homeschool mom.