Back-To-School Lunch Room Routine Activity

For most kiddos, kindergarten is their first experience with the cafeteria and it's important to go over acceptable behaviors, daily routines, and other lunch time expectations during the first day/throughout the first week of school. We found some super great ideas while perusing some of our favorite teaching blogs and thought we'd pass them along...

Kathryn over at Kindergarten Kindergarten actually takes her kiddos down to the cafeteria (when it's free of kids, of course!) and shows them EVERYthing! How to line up, what proper line behavior looks like, where to get their food, what to do with their lunch cards, how to sit, how NOT to sit, etc! It's a fantastic, slightly humorous (be sure to read the full post for details), hands-on way to soothe the nerves of your first-timers and make it crystal clear to your kinders what your lunch room expectations are. Back in the classroom, Kathryn then engages her class in a discussion of good/bad lunch room choices and has them create a cutesy lunch box craft {pictured above} to reinforce the rules. She offers lots of great tips and tricks, so be sure read the full post!

In a similar vein, Kindergarten Nana suggests adding routine books to your classroom to help teach and reinforce expected lunch room behavior. Each page features a different step of the process from washing hands and lining up, to sitting at the table and raising a hand for help. This is a great resource to pull out throughout the year to remind your kiddos of your expectations.

For these fabulous back-to-school resources, be sure to visit Kindergarten Kindergarten and Kindergarten Nana!