Snack time – a great time for learning

Whether you provide the food or the children bring their own, snack and lunch times offer many opportunities to practice basic skills. Daily repetitive five-minute informal lessons at snack time give students a chance to gain confidence in learning, to be introduced to new concepts in a relaxed environment and are an excellent way to teach rote memory items.

Keep a pad of paper, a white or chalkboard near the snack area. Check that all children can see it from their chairs.

Start at the beginning of snack time, just as the children begin eating. Keep the lessons short, about five minutes and repeat the same concepts daily for a week or so. Keep the children involved, rather than talking for 5 minutes about the differences between fruit and vegetables!

A few snack time teaching ideas - of course you do not do them all in one day!

Counting – "Let’s count how many apples we have brought today…bananas…oranges…" If you are serving food, have two different kinds of the same thing. "Let’s count how many children picked banana muffins and how many chose blueberry."

Number Sense – Offer small food items to the class, such as cherries, but say “Take 7 cherries each…” This takes a while, but gives the children practice with the concept of seven.

Counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s – It is easy to create opportunities for children to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s, as children sit around tables at snack time. “Hold up one hand, how many fingers… 5… let’s count by 5s, 5, 10, 15….” or “Mrs. Smith sent 10 bear crackers in muffin cups each… Let’s count by 10s, 10, 20…”

Letter awareness - "Susan and Elizabeth both have a kiwi in their snack today. Kiwi begins with the letter K and represents the k sound. Can you think of another word that begins with K?" Print the letter in both formats on the board. Have the kids make the letter in the air with their fingers.

Food groups – Have the children who brought fruit in their snack hold it up, then the vegetables, the protein snacks, etcetra. Children’s excitement about learning mirrors their teacher’s. Keep snack activities short and fast paced.

Environmental issues – As young children may have little say in how food in their snack is packaged, I mainly focus these concepts on items I bring for snack. “I brought apple sauce in a packed plastic container and also an apple. Which one is better for the environment (assuming some teaching on this subject has already occurred)? Why?”

Languages – One year I had an aide who spoke French and took over while I had my break. After 2 or 3 months of 5 minute snack time teaching many of the children could count to ten, name some fruit and vegetables and had a good grasp of color words in French.

Manners – Not all families place the same value on manners and some children appear ill mannered only because they have never been taught. Once again, five-minute, daily lessons focusing on one social behavior will have an impact over a period of time.

I advise sitting with the children to teach them about manners. This age really enjoys watching their teacher make mistakes and model both the correct and incorrect social behavior, exaggerating the incorrect of course!

Teach the basic “how to” of eating with closed mouths, passing food from left to right, using napkins, asking for something rather than reaching across the table and grabbing it, how to not double-dip, taking only as much as you can eat, not touching their neighbor’s food or food offered on a plate unless they plan to take it.

Provide chatting time too - Children need opportunities to visit and chat with each other, so don't use all their snack time on lessons.

Newest pages in the past month or so:

Teach symmetry: Young children will begin to understand the concept and vocabulary of symmetry if you give them time to play games and participate in symmetry activities.

Home schooling kindergarten: Take time to familiarize yourself with the basic skills kindergarten children should learn. You will find them in easy to read lists on this site. Then be aware that there are many different ways to teach these skills and that as a homeschooling family you have many great opportunities to teach using the outdoors and everyday items.

I also divided a few pages that were way too long and added more navigation links for each subject area. A number of you had asked me for resource ideas, so I also set up an Amazon store with some of my favorite books and manipulatives and also to help pay web hosting fees! Visit the kindergarten-lessons store.

Hope you are having fun with the kids and that your classroom continues to develop into a place of exploration, problem solving and creative thought processes for your students.

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Best regards, Patricia from kindergarten-lessons.com