Wondering how to keep kids eating nutritious food during the hectic back-to-school season?
Jessica Braider, founder of The 6 O’Clock Scramble, joins me to share practical tips and simple strategies for breakfasts, snacks, dinners and meal planning. With a few smart habits and a bit of planning, you can keep your children eating well—and even involve them in the process—whether they’re at school or being homeschooled. Here’s how.
Find the Scramble here.
Try the 14-day free trial and receive a free ebook to make getting dinner on the table easier.
Can’t see the video? Click to watch “Back to School Meal Planning Tips” on YouTube.
Back to School Meal Planning Tips
- 0:14: How The 6 O’Clock Scramble and meal planning support busy families.
- 1:08: Jessica’s personal healthy eating journey.
- 1:50: How The 6 O’Clock Scramble got started.
- 3:10: What Jessica’s family typically eats and how she keeps meals balanced.
My goal is really to make my house a place where people can come and gather around the table and see how delicious healthy food can really be. -Jessica Braider
Kids don’t need plastic knives. They need real skills.
Teach safe technique, focus, and confidence in the most popular lesson from our kids’ cooking class (ages 2–12).
Or find out more about the free knife class here.
- 5:16: Before launching her meal-planning service, Jessica worked one-on-one as a health coach. The two most common struggles she saw were lack of time and lack of confidence in the kitchen.
- 6:33: Jessica compares learning to cook to learning to drive: overwhelming at first, but quickly becoming natural and even enjoyable with practice.
- 7:34: Confidence grows by doing—believing you can cook helps you improve.
- 8:22: A beginner-friendly favorite is skillet pasta sauce; quick wins like this build kitchen morale.
- 9:44: Back-to-school season tips and routines.
- 10:22: Jessica’s recommendations for nutritious, easy school lunches. Two top tips: use dinner leftovers and batch cook to save time.
- 12:06: Getting kids involved in packing their own lunches is transformative. Teach them what a balanced lunch looks like, then trust them to make choices within that framework.
- 15:11: Use the lunchbox as a communication tool: Jessica recommends a rule that “everything goes home” so parents can see what was eaten and what wasn’t.
- 17:11: Mornings can be smoother with make-ahead breakfasts. Batch-cooking breakfast items and keeping them in the freezer makes weekday mornings faster and less stressful.
- 20:13: Details on The 6 O’Clock Scramble meal-planning service and how it simplifies healthy dinners for busy families.
- 21:52: A feature of The 6 O’Clock Scramble recipes that resonates with parents focused on real food for kids.
- 23:30: Snacks: keep acceptable options at kid level and limit snacks in the hour and a half before dinner to fruits and vegetables.
- 25:56: Offer the healthy foods you want your kids to eat, then let them learn balance and portion control by making some choices on their own.
Find out more about Jessica and start a two-week free trial of The 6 O’Clock Scramble to see how it can help your family!
Jessica is the CEO of The Scramble, an online meal-planning service that helps busy families get quick, easy, and delicious meals on the table every night.
She develops recipes and writes about food, cooking, and eating with an emphasis on balance, enjoyment, and humor. Jessica has over 13 years of experience facilitating workshops for groups of various sizes and offers sessions on topics such as Raising Healthy Eaters, Healthy Lunches in a Snap, Dinner in 30, and Healthy Breakfasts in a Flash.
