Preparing for Big School 1
I did a web search on preparations for first day of primary school and now have a 'To Do' list. Helping him prepare for school lunch was the first task I chose to tackle.
Baby's primary school will not provide school lunches so we will need to pack hot/cold lunches daily. Cold lunches are fairly straightforward to prepare but hot lunches may be a bit more problematic. Aside from the time required to cook the meal, the food needs to be transported in containers that can keep food warm till lunch time, i.e. for about 4-6 hours from packing time. It will take some planning and a fair bit of discipline to keep on top of the cooking but it should be do-able. A quick search on the internet led to a haul of potential lunch box fillers. It also revealed that, apparently, not all thermal lunch boxes actually keep food warm and price is not a reliable indicator of functionality. I spent a fair few nights looking for something that would match our requirements: the container had to keep food warm and should be child friendly. We did find one for which the reviews were generally positive, and are waiting for the item to arrive so we can move on to stage 2: training Baby to use (e.g. open and close) the thermal lunch box. The school teacher will, undoubtedly, help children if they are struggling but it would be nice if Baby could get to his lunch, and pack his lunch things away after the meal, on his own. He generally enjoys being able to do things for himself so I think it would give him a good feeling about being at school if he could manage lunch on his own.
I thought that the cold lunch storage would be less of an issue. In fact, although choosing a cold lunch box was fairly easy as there are lots of choices, we discovered that stage 2 was required for Baby's cold lunch storage too. Although the container is really just a standard sandwich box with decorations that appeal to children, opening and closing the lunch box required a bit of coaching as he had not done it before. I suppose I took a lot of 'simple' tasks for granted: they may not be so simple if one is only 4 and have never had to do them before.
Baby's primary school will not provide school lunches so we will need to pack hot/cold lunches daily. Cold lunches are fairly straightforward to prepare but hot lunches may be a bit more problematic. Aside from the time required to cook the meal, the food needs to be transported in containers that can keep food warm till lunch time, i.e. for about 4-6 hours from packing time. It will take some planning and a fair bit of discipline to keep on top of the cooking but it should be do-able. A quick search on the internet led to a haul of potential lunch box fillers. It also revealed that, apparently, not all thermal lunch boxes actually keep food warm and price is not a reliable indicator of functionality. I spent a fair few nights looking for something that would match our requirements: the container had to keep food warm and should be child friendly. We did find one for which the reviews were generally positive, and are waiting for the item to arrive so we can move on to stage 2: training Baby to use (e.g. open and close) the thermal lunch box. The school teacher will, undoubtedly, help children if they are struggling but it would be nice if Baby could get to his lunch, and pack his lunch things away after the meal, on his own. He generally enjoys being able to do things for himself so I think it would give him a good feeling about being at school if he could manage lunch on his own.
I thought that the cold lunch storage would be less of an issue. In fact, although choosing a cold lunch box was fairly easy as there are lots of choices, we discovered that stage 2 was required for Baby's cold lunch storage too. Although the container is really just a standard sandwich box with decorations that appeal to children, opening and closing the lunch box required a bit of coaching as he had not done it before. I suppose I took a lot of 'simple' tasks for granted: they may not be so simple if one is only 4 and have never had to do them before.
Baby's little bento box for fruit and snacks, which is to be used in conjunction with his thermal lunch box, arrived yesterday. He managed to open and close it, disassemble and reassemble it, without problems. The box was decorated with his favourite cartoon characters and he was over the moon just playing around with it. Glad that one worked out.
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