Rules and Routines: Lunch Choice

One of the morning jobs my kiddos have to do when they come in in the morning is to make their lunch choice.  We have 4 options at our school – 2 “warm” lunch choices, soy butter and jelly, and lunch from home.

I have been using these cute little sandwich containers for a few years now – they work just perfectly.  I’ve found them at both Target and Wal-Mart.

Each child has a “popcorn” piece with their name on it.  Our district is nice enough to provide primary classrooms with a picture lunch menu, so the children look at the choice, and place their popcorn piece into the lunch of their choice.

I’ve also used apple pieces too – here is another picture…

When we line up to go to lunch we line up by our lunch  number choice.  I train my kiddos to hold up a 1,2, or 3 with their fingers to let the lunch ladies know what their choice is.  The first person in each group gets to hold the lunch number card, so the ladies will know when a new group is starting.  I just use colored construction paper labeled with 1,2, or 3.  Nothing fancy!

Children in our district also have a six digit number they have to learn.  Luckily, our kitchen staff understands that kindergarten kiddos need to take it slow and first learn the routine of the lunch room before they start entering their lunch numbers!

This week we will start working hard on learning our numbers.  We love to use these to practice entering our lunch numbers (they have to enter them in a keypad).

The kids think it’s pretty awesome.

The children all wear their nametag with their lunch number on it for the first few times they enter their number, but I’m always amazed at how quickly they learn it!

Here are a couple more activities that I use.  Grab them if you can use them! (Sorry, but I can’t make any changes to them).

 

PS – We use PowerSchool to enter in our student’s lunch choices, so we don’t have to keep to write it down and send it to the office.  Makes life in the morning a bit easier :) We try to count each choice as a class and enter it in, but sometimes I just quickly enter it while they are doing their morning jobs.

Here are some more ideas for lunch choices….click on each image to go to the original post.

(This one went to a dead link, so if it’s yours, please let me know!)

Do you have any fun routines that you use to make lunch choices?  How about lining up?  Leave a comment below and share what you know!