Jul 19 2008
Are You Ready? Back to School…Lunchtime Tips
… because it’s just around the corner!
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If you have a kindergartner gearing up for the first day of school, it’s time to put yourself in his/her shoes in regard to LUNCH.
*Soggy sandwiches aren’t fun to eat, so try coating both pieces of bread with peanut butter with some jelly in the middle to avoid jelly-soak-through.
*Orange chips stain clothes. Yes, kids still wipe their hands all over their shirts and pants, ignoring the cute napkin you included in their lunchbox. Lunch time is social time so kids are too busy chatting, visiting, and listening in on conversations to remember the good manners you taught them.
*Those little plastic wrappers on the straws for juice boxes don’t always have a slit cut into them. Juice boxes tend to be easier to punch straws into than the pouch style drinks.
*Though teachers discourage it, food bartering/swapping still takes place at lunch or snack time. Please remember that some students have food allergies, occasionally severe. It’s important that your child knows he/she is still a good friend even though s/he won’t share peanut butter cookies (or offer “just a taste” of some other treat) with classmates.
*If your child likes to save leftovers for a snack later in the day, please practice fastening those plastic storage lids or ziploc baggies NOW, otherwise, be prepared for very messy spills and mountains of crumbs in backpacks or lunch sacks.
*If you send a thermos with lunch, make sure your child knows which way is “up” when it comes to putting the thermos back in the lunch box, otherwise s/he will be back in Leak-and-Spillsville.
*Not every classroom has a refrigerator available, so if you live in hot climate, plan on skipping the mayo and milk.
*Snack packaging (the wrappers on cookies, chips, graham crackers, trail mix, fruit snacks, etc.) isn’t always easy for little hands to open. Cut a small slit in the top of each to help ease your child’s frustration. The same goes for the tips of bananas, or the peels on oranges.
*Yes, teachers are happy to help your young ones learn how to open milk cartons and lunch wrappers, but children feel such a sense of accomplishment, independence and helpfulness when they can do it on their own and teach their friends the “tricks of the trade” as well. Small milk cartons are available at most grocery stores if your kindergartner would like to practice before school starts.
*Not every child knows that you’d rather not open a lunchbox full of wrappers, banana peels, or used juice straws at the end of every day. Additionally, kids don’t always know that you might want their plastic containers returned home! Decide and discuss which items morph from “food wrappers” or containers to disposable trash, and which don’t. You’ll keep a lot of your Tupperware collection intact if you address this sooner rather than later. Ditto for silverware!
*Make sure you write your child’s name on that lunch box or lunch sack, because there’s always at least one classmate who will have the same one, or one similar looking enough that mix-ups will occur.
*If your child will purchase lunch at school each day, make sure you find out the “routine” in advance and see if you can prepay so your child won’t panic or experience a meltdown if lunch money has been lost on the playground.
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Do you have any tips or helpful hints for lunch time? Please share by commenting!
2 responses so far
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Not a tip—just a story to share.
Apparently, Food Services decided to serve soup on the first day of school last year.
I was not there to see this, but you can easily imagine the scene with kinders at their first day of school trying to carry trays with soup. I understand that it wasn’t pretty.
Teachers didn’t forget and made sure to remind Food Services about this before the end of the year before they planned menus.
Heh heh heh, I’m sure it was referred to as “The Soup Incident” too!
At one school I taught at, the lunch routine fell apart when everyone in the rather large cafeteria realized that my kindergartners 1) couldn’t carry the heavy trays with perfect balance, 2) they couldn’t see OVER the other students who were already seated as they tried to find their table and 3) they got tired after walking from the lunch servers all the way to the opposite side of the gym to be seated. Lots of spills, lots of frustration, a few tears. The lunch table assignments were immediately changed so that the kindergarten students got their lunch and walked to the first tables in the row, only a few steps away.
What surprised me was the fact that it wasn’t the first year at the school that kindergartners had lunch in the cafeteria. Wasn’t it a problem in years previous?