Lunch Packing Work

Our "theme" for August is going to be SCHOOL. Q is super interested in "teaching class" and loves sitting her babies in a row and drawing on the chalkboard easel while she teaches them. She'll be going to preschool two days a week starting at the end of August, so it's a good time to draw on her interest in school and extend it in our Kitchen School here at home.

Our first "work" for this unit is a lunch packing activity. She has a little sandwich making kit she got for her birthday last year. The pieces of the sandwich velcro together. I also put out a small bowl of strawberries. I saved an empty sandwich baggie box and put 4 bags in it. I washed out a small milk container. I also put out her lunch bag from last year which got replaced with one that fits her waterbottle (this one turned out to be a bad design for the containers I typically send so it's been replaced.). I showed her how to make the sandwiches and put one in each bag, and fill the other bags with strawberries, then put it all in the lunch bag. She likes to incorporate other objects from her little kitchen as well, and LOVES to pack lunch for her babies to take to school.

If you don't have the sandwich kit, any play food would work, or you could cut sandwich pieces from felt or even cardstock.

This pretend-play work is a big hit. It also promotes following steps to complete a task, practical life skills of packing a lunch, fine motor skills of zipping the lunch bag and the sandwich baggies, and allows for dramatic play.