Easy Breakfast Meals for Busy Families

Tips for setting up a simple breakfast plan so your kids can have healthy breakfasts without it taking up your whole morning to make it.

Boy eating pancakes and drinking orange juice.

For a long, long time, my children had cereal and yogurt for breakfast each morning. Fruit was also available. Despite the fact that they loved it, I always felt like that was something I wanted to change.

It was difficult, however, when I was pregnant because I am super sick when pregnant. I am also not a big breakfast eater–I get sick when I eat too early (which is, again, difficult with the whole pregnant thing). I prefer eating “breakfast foods” at dinner time. It was also difficult when I had a nursing baby because nursing babies can be unpredictable and I can be tired in the morning when nursing a baby at night, so the easy cereal and yogurt thing worked well.

This school year, I decided I wanted to change the breakfast thing at our house. I am not pregnant and my youngest is two. But I wanted breakfast to still be something that could be simple and quick. I didn’t want to take away from any of our favorite breakfast for dinner meals. My children all like routine, so I figured I could pick five breakfasts for school days and stick with those. Then they could have a cereal day on the weekend and we already have the tradition of homemade muffins on one weekend day.

Our breakfasts have been working really well. I wanted to share our ideas so you could get some ideas. If you have any simple and quick breakfasts, please share!

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Monday–Pancake Day

Brayden loves to cook and really wanted to have a morning he made pancakes each week. Each Monday, he makes pancakes. 

Tuesday–Yogurt and Granola Day

I make yogurt using this yogurt maker: Euro Cuisine YM80 Yogurt Maker. It works well. I wish it made more so I could have more than one week’s worth for my family at a time, but the flavor and texture are good. I also wish it would automatically turn off rather than you having to turn it off, so it isn’t the perfect yogurt maker.

I also make our granola. I use the recipe I found here. It is delicious and very healthy. The ingredients are expensive, but I priced it against the cheap stuff at the store and it is the exact same price ounce for ounce. It tastes better and is healthier. It is very simple to make. I double it and it lasts us three weeks. Yogurt and granola day is hands down Brinley’s favorite. 

You can also try this Easy Homemade Yogurt Recipe

Wednesday–Cereal Day

My children love their cereal. So I left a cereal day there for them. There are only certain cereals they are allowed to have on a school day.

Thursday–Smoothie or Oatmeal Day

On Thursday, the kids can choose to have either a smoothie for breakfast or oatmeal and hot chocolate. Brayden always chooses smoothie and the girls choose oatmeal.

Friday–Eggs Day

Friday is the day we have eggs. Brayden likes to cook scrambled eggs for himself. He usually makes a breakfast burrito. The girls prefer eggs over easy with toast. 

Saturday and Sunday

We like to do muffins one day and cereal another. For cereal day on a weekend, they can have any kind they want. 

Caveat

I want to caveat and say this post isn’t intended to make you feel guilty or like you are a bad parent if your kids eat cereal every day for breakfast. I ate cereal almost every day of my life and came out okay. Until recently, my children did, too. I like the idea of more variety in the diet, cereal is expensive, and I also think cereal doesn’t have the best “staying power” in the system to last until lunchtime. I shared this with you so you know if you want to have variety for breakfast, too, there are easy and quick options for you.

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6 thoughts on “Easy Breakfast Meals for Busy Families”

  1. Our breakfast needs to be quick so my husband can get up and help my oldest, eat, and be out the door before 8 🙂 I like to make baked oatmeal the night before and heat it up in the microwave. My daughter will help me make muffins during the day to throw in the freezer which is really fast. We also love yogurt and granola and we'll randomly eat cereal, pb toast, or eggs too.

    Reply
    • Thank you Jessie! I was thinking I should make extra muffins on thr weekend. And I should do baked oatmeal–I have a recipe for it. Thanks for the ideas!

      Reply
    • Yes. "Healthy"Is definitely in quotes 🙂 but I go with cereals that can sustain them until lunch time. We allow:-frosted mini wheat-raisin bran-honey but Cheerios or Cheerios. Those are the main ones. There might be others that are similar, but I can't think of it off hand so we wouldn't have it often.

      Reply

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