Repost: Kindergarten Lunchtime Tips

Repost: Here's an update to a post I blogged three years ago, with tips on helping students navigate their lunchtime routine at school.  Whether students eat in a cafeteria or remain in their classroom for meals, a little help from parents before school starts can make all the difference.  Read through to the end for links to kid-friendly lunch box meal ideas!

(Eco lunch boxes found here)

Parents, do you have a kindergartner gearing up for his or her first day of school?  It's not just time to think about tracking down school supply lists and new clothes, but to prepare for new schedules and routines that will quickly be put into place regarding snack and lunch times too.  

*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 a social time so kids are too busy chatting, visiting, and listening in on conversations to remember the good manners you taught them.

*While packing lunch, check to see if there's a slit cut into the straw wrapper for your child's drink.  If there isn't, make one so that your child doesn't resort to ripping it apart with his or her teeth.  Juice boxes tend to be easier to punch straws into than the pouch style drinks.

*Though teachers and lunch aides 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 being a good friend doesn't require the sharing of food or offering "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 baggies now, or be prepared for very messy spills and mountains of crumbs coming home to you in backpacks or lunch sacks.

*If you send a thermos with lunch, make sure your child knows which way is "up" and how the lid should be level when twisted back on.  Leaks and spills are messy, especially if your child shares a locker or cubby with a classmate.

*Not every classroom has a refrigerator available, so if you live in a 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. BTW, few teachers, lunch aides and custodians will appreciate it if Dad insists on teaching your kindergartner how to "pop" chip bags open.

*We're 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 food wrappers or containers are disposable trash, and which aren'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.  Prepaying also enables the lunch lines to move more quickly.

*The teacher might ask that all students bring a snack (or two) each day or might ask parents to sign up to provide snacks for the entire class one day each month.  Make sure to ask if there are any food items that cannot be shared due to allergies or cultural food preferences before preparing snacks for your child or classmates.

*Eating surfaces are also learning surfaces in classrooms, so your child will need to clean crumbs and spills before beginning a new activity.  To many children, "cleaning" means brushing crumbs from the tabletop to the floor or soaking up spills with sleeves or shirt hems. Thank you for teaching your child how to wipe down and dry a surface and to throw wrappers away in the trashcan.

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Do you have any tips or helpful hints for how to handle lunch and snacktime at school?  Please share by commenting~

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~ Wendy Copely shares Lunch Box Ideas for Back to School

~ Tina from Mommy's Kitchen has lots of great photos of Back to School Lunch Ideas from Walmart

~ ... and Moms by Heart feature printable lunch note freebies here.

Climbing the Walls for Students

Apologies in advance, I'm still recovering from our latest round of Parent Teacher Conferences and all of the germs that have taken an extended tour in my classroom this month. As a result, my brain has had to sort through a Sudafed-haze before coming to any semi-clear landscape where the teacher's voice inside my head can speak without generating a painful echo. Nice acoustics in here when I'm sick though...or perhaps I should be worried?

As usual, the part of me that craves efficiency, simplicity, an Occam's Razor bottom-line when it comes to kindergarten issues, is feeling a bit let-down after conferences. Many parents attended ready to talk and interact, interested in not only how their children were doing academically but socially as well. They made proactive statements, asked proactive questions, and expressed interest in not only the Here-and-Now but on down the line as well. Several other families, recovering from their own bouts of illness attended and made sure to bring their grocery-list of questions to remember to ask (I assume they too were navigating a cold/flu medicine fog) which we readily covered, checking off each topic as we moved from handwriting, coloring, math skills, recess behavior, school crushes (yes, this early), and whether or not PE shoes were getting too tight. Finally, the Award/Accolade/Keeping-Up-With-the-Joneses-by-Pushing-Our-Children-to-Ridiculous-Extremes families attended. They voiced their concerns with accusatory questions, such as: "Why isn't my daughter reading at a second grade level by now like her brother was at her age?" "What do you mean, there is no Gifted and Talented Program for my child in kindergarten?" "Why isn't my son sitting and sounding out words for several hours each day at school, he will learn to read, won't he?" "Isn't it time to move the students away from those learning centers? I mean, they're just PLAYING." You get the idea, and I'll bet you have a very clear mental image of who I'm talking about.

Just to let you know, the accusatory part of the questioning isn't what bothered me. I've taught long enough to know that while I can't please everyone all of the time, I can still do a good job and provide students valuable, fun, and meaningful learning experiences that help build their foundation for not only school, but for life. The part of the Scorekeeper Parents' questions that bothered me was the fact that they clearly reflected the families' true nature of competition instead of care. Acquiring shiny trophies over acquiring a decent self-truth. Hoop-jumping instead of Life-Living. It also reminded me of just how little parents CHOOSE to know about their children, and therefore, about me and the job I do. Oddly, it still surprises me annually when I'm faced with the realization that some of the parents of my students don't feel the need or obligation to think outside of their own boxes when necessary, which happens on a daily basis with children. It must be the optimist in me. I trust that people will think, explore, postulate, and re-evaluate. Perhaps it's a natural carry-over from the fact that I'm PAID to help children do these things. It's a bridge to me until I run smack into the wall that some parents have somehow managed to bring along with them on this kindergarten trek. And each year, I have to have the rope and grappling hook ready to fling over the wall, the fitness and fortitude to haul my butt up to the top, and then the diplomacy skills to entice the parents to scale their side of the wall to join me for a looksie.

What do I try to show the parents who join me at the higher altitude?

That reading isn't sounding out words in boring texts. "Sad Sam was sad" isn't NEARLY as interesting or literacy-rich as "NO DAVID!" (Be honest S.F.A.'ers, do you really LIKE those KinderRoots "books" or does David Shannon speak more to your own inner-reader?). Guess why?

That learning is three-dimensional, multi-sensory, and consuming. It offers new information, it helps develop preference, it gives us a common language and schema so that we may better communicate and interact, and it offers its own rewards and pleasures. Ask any adult trying a new cuisine for the first time about their own apprehension, their awkwardness, their fear, their effort, their discovery, their satisfaction, and their possible JOY at having learned or found something NEW. That's what children experience daily, all the time, and not just with food, but with LIFE. It's not **just** playing. It's learning. It's developing. It's reinforcing. It's expanding. It's negotiating, sharing, and making other discoveries possible and less frightening. Don't take away those Lego's just yet. Yes, the silly puppet voice really does help. Shake your Sillies Out regularly. For some kids, mustard and peanut butter sandwiches are AWESOME tasting.

That test scores aren't the bottom line and they aren't who your children are, no matter what a teacher tells you. No matter what a school district report card tells you. No matter what a nation's government administration tells you. Personal preferences aside, parents, employers, neighbors, are always going to be wanting to rank each other in some form, in some way, for whatever reasons.... be they good ones or not. It's the nature of our beast. But if YOU don't like being merely a number, don't do everything in your power to turn your child into one (or let others do it for you). Remember, figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure. Imagine your life today if it was steered by that one red-ink percentage score on the French test you failed in high school. Not cool.

And finally, parents need to be brave. Choose bravery over living in fear. Your children do it every day in my classroom. Don't fear the tests. Don't fear the Joneses. Don't wake up shaking because your daughter only has a Dora backpack instead of a Louis Vuitton. Get some finger paint out. Bake some cookies. Catch some bugs. Listen to the rain. Sing a song. Have a book swap with your friends and neighbors. Actually TRY eating green eggs and ham. Stop. Listen. Think. Hear. Smell. Taste. Touch. See. Live. It's how you discover what your own Big Picture is. It's how you help your child discover his or her own. Enjoy your discoveries. Don't fear them. If you like trophies, these are the shiniest of them all.

Thankfully, enough parents each year scale that wall, balance at the top for a bit, and then join me on the other side. The optimist in me can't help looking forward to the year that the bridge runs unobstructed from point A to point B, with mutual sharing and learning motoring both ways. Until then, the rope and grappling hook are properly packed and stored.

Happy Almost-Spring. Time to read some Carl Sagan again before the next round of Sudafed. Maybe it will help!