Tips and advice:
-Prep produce and meat on Sundays (or after a big shop, any day you have the most time)  Wash carrots, cut carrot sticks, celery sticks, roast veggies, marinate meat, cut up apple slices, wash and store lettuce.  Makes morning lunch packing quicker and less stressful. It also helps your kids get over slightly ‘browned’ apples. They taste the same, and please don’t complain.
-Pre-cut cards for birthday cards for friends. I give each of my children their own envelope with a stack of blank cards (folded card stock). Then, when they are invited to a birthday party, they get their envelope, pull out a card and drawing supplies, and get to work. I keep their envelopes on a kid-height shelf that they could easily access. Also, if they were ever “bored” they could use the blank cards as canvases create away.
-Snack cupboard just for them.  I put all their snacks in old nut butter jars. Snacks like almonds, unsweetened coconut flakes, dried fruit, plantain chips, multi-grain crackers, etc. Little melanine plates and water cups are also at their level so they can help themselves when they are hungry. This is a convenient way to kill many birds with one stone: They cultivate independence, they learn about what makes a balanced snack (adding protein and complex carbohydrates to their go-to sugars aka dried fruits), they learn to listen to their bodies. Bonus: One less thing for you to stop what you’re doing to go do for them.
-Jelly jar yogurt: I prep 12 at the beginning of the week: plain yogurt parfaits layered with fruit or jam or honey in a jelly jar with lids…I make individual servings for them and they can get one in the morning. I have also been known to make breakfast popsicles, which is a frozen yogurt parfait- layers of plain yogurt sweetened with maple syrup and pureed fruit.  Independence (with a watchful eye) around food is key.
-Make a batch of sugar cookie dough and divide into 2-4 discs, wrap each disc in saran wrap, place plastic-wrapped discs into a ziplock bag, put in freezer. We pull out a disc when someone feels like baking. The kids can mix granulated sugar with a little food coloring to make their own colored sugar sprinkles to put on the cookies before they go in the oven. Rainy days or last minute dinner invitations have been enhanced by this easy hack. It is something I still do, even now that my kids are older, only now they don’t need any supervision!