Kids ask “what’s for dinner?” roughly eleven times a day. A meal planner for kids flips that question around. Instead of you answering it, they help decide it, and the answer sits on the fridge where anyone can read it.
It sounds like more work. It’s usually less. Children who helped plan a meal are more likely to eat it, less likely to complain about it, and slowly learn that dinner doesn’t appear by magic. This guide covers how to plan meals with kids at different ages, and how a colourful printable like the Rainbow Plate Meal Planning Kit makes it feel like an activity rather than a chore.
Why plan meals with your kids at all?
- Buy-in. “You chose Thursday” ends a lot of dinner-table arguments.
- Less “what’s for dinner?”. The answer is on the fridge. Point at it.
- Life skills. Planning, budgeting, writing lists and reading recipes, all hidden inside a weekly routine.
- Trying new food. A child who picked “something new” from a list is more curious about it than one who had it put in front of them.
What kids can do at each age
Ages 3 to 5: colour and choose
Little ones can’t plan a week, but they can make choices. Offer two dinners and let them pick one. Let them colour in a picture or a box next to “their” night. At this age, the goal is involvement, not decisions.
Ages 6 to 9: pick a night and track
This age group can choose a whole dinner from a short list of family favourites. They can help write the shopping list, tick things off at the store and colour in trackers for water, fruit and vegetables. Give them a job each week, and keep it the same job so they own it.
Ages 10 and up: plan and cook
Older kids can plan a full dinner, write the ingredients onto the list, check the pantry, and cook it with you (or alone, depending on the kid and the kitchen). Some families give each older child one night a week as “their” dinner from start to finish.
How Rainbow Plate fits a family routine
Rainbow Plate is a set of 18 planner pages in soft rainbow colours. It isn’t a “kids only” product. It’s a family meal planner with a few details that make it easy for children to join in.
The weekly planner (Monday or Sunday start) has three meals a day, plus water droplets to colour in, veg and fruit circles, and a snack line and a move line for each day. Those trackers are perfect for a six-year-old with a felt-tip pen. Colouring in a glass of water is surprisingly motivating when you’re seven.
A tear-off shopping list runs down the right edge of the page. Cut along the dashed line and hand it to your child at the store. They become the list-keeper, which tends to keep them busy and away from the sweet aisle.
Other pages that work well with kids:
- Meal Ideas: made for the dinners your family asks for again and again. Build this list together and let kids choose from it.
- Quick Recipe Cards: a sheet of small cards for recipes you cook together.
- 4-Week Dinner Rotation: fill it once as a family, then repeat it.
- Weekly Review: a simple habit check and space to note what worked. Ask the kids which dinner was best.
- Dinner Planner and Monthly Meal Plan: for the bigger picture.
There’s also a Grocery List, a Shopping List, a Food Budget Tracker, a Pantry Inventory, a Fridge + Freezer page, a Daily Food Diary, a Meal Prep Planner and a Recipe Page.
Print it or type it
Every writing line is a fillable field and the tick circles are clickable, so you can type the week’s plan on a computer and then print it. Or print blank pages and let the kids write and colour by hand, which most of them prefer. The pages are undated, so you can reprint the weekly page every week. Keep one clean copy as your master.
It comes in four sizes: US Letter, A4, A5 and Half Letter. For a fridge page that kids can read and colour, use US Letter or A4. The smaller sizes have smaller lines, which suit neat adult handwriting more than a crayon.
A Sunday routine with kids, in 20 minutes
- Print a fresh weekly page.
- Each child picks one dinner from the Meal Ideas page and writes (or draws) it on their night.
- You fill the remaining nights.
- Older kids check the pantry and fridge for what’s already there.
- Together, write the ingredients on the tear-off shopping list.
- Stick the page on the fridge. During the week, kids colour in water, fruit and veg as they go.
- Next Sunday, look at the Weekly Review together before planning again.
Who it suits, and who it doesn’t
Rainbow Plate suits families who like paper on the fridge, kids who love colouring things in, and parents who want a cheerful planner that doesn’t look like office stationery.
It’s not the right pick if you want the planner to add up costs or build a list automatically. The budget totals are filled in by you, and nothing calculates. It also isn’t a hyperlinked tablet planner (only the contents page is clickable). And if colour isn’t your thing, a plainer black and white kit will feel calmer.
Meal planner for kids: FAQ
At what age can kids help with meal planning?
From about three, kids can choose between two options. By six or seven they can pick a whole dinner from a list, and by ten many can plan and help cook a simple meal.
How do I get picky kids to try new meals?
Let them choose the new meal from a short list, serve it with a familiar side, and keep portions small. Repeated, low-pressure tries work better than pushing.
Can I type into the Rainbow Plate pages?
Yes. Every writing line is a fillable field in a PDF reader that supports forms, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader or most web browsers. Test one page first if you use a tablet app.
Will it work in GoodNotes on an iPad?
You can write over the PDF with a stylus in most note apps. Typing into the fields depends on the app, so try a single page before you commit.