Bento for Girl Scouts!

Miss Faith is in Cadettes this year and I've been helping a bit with her troop.  For those not familiar with the Girl Scout ranks, Cadettes are 6th through 8th grade.  Her troop has some Cadettes and some Ambassadors (high school aged girls).  It's a smaller troop on the military base where we live, so we tend to average maybe 6-10 girls, based on moves and such.

After looking through the badge list, I really wanted to do a bento class with the girls.  Two of the Cadette badges are "New Cuisines" and "Eating for Health and Beauty" so bento fit in perfectly with the two of those.

With the help of my amazing friend Kelly at EasyLunchboxes, Miss Faith and I put together a little bento class for our troop.  Kelly sent lunch boxes for my girls so they each could take one home, with a lunch in it, but have the box to use again and again!  Faith and I also stopped into our dollar store for some heart picks the girls could keep and I brought along multiple cutters and shapes for them to experiment with.

Our other leader picked up some basics at the commissary for the girls--bread, meat and cheese for sandwiches, grapes and strawberries for fruits, carrots, pretzels, and vanilla wafers, plus two new items to try, peanut butter whips for dipping and dried apricots (also great for decorations).  Faith brought a good sample of our items to show and explain, including different styles of bento boxes, various cutters and picks, and egg molds.

After a quick demo from Faith on how to use the told, the girls got to work and each created a lunch of their own.  We had this meeting on an evening with school the next day so the girls could take their lunches with them.  It was awesome to see the creations and the personalities show up in their lunches!

The follow up has been even better.  One of our high school girls has really gotten into bento style lunches.  She's also a soccer and softball player, so she prefers to bring her own to make sure she gets what she needs nutritionally.  I have added to her bento collection too, as she told me she likes the more fun lunches as well!  It's so awesome to see that she is keeping it up.

Again, thank you so much to Kelly at EasyLunchboxes!  Faith and I definitely could not have done this without you.

Want your own Easy Lunchboxes?  They're available on Amazon!