Lunch Bunch- Whaaaaat?!

I recently received an e-mail from a teacher wondering what in the world my "lunch bunch" is that I do on Fridays and I thought you might like to hear about it as well!

"Lunch Bunch" is when students who have earned the privilege to come, can bypass the cafeteria and eat their lunch with me in our classroom on Friday.

Yes.  Earn the privilege.

To be able to come, you can either be directly invited by me OR you can do one of the following:
*make some kind of amazing, wonderful, stellar choice
*fill in one side of the AR test log sheet (they write down the tests they've taken and their scores)
*complete a level in the 100 Club
*write up to an increment of 500 on number scrolls (500, 1000, 1500, 2000, etc...)

When a student earns the right to come, I give them a sticky note and they write their name on it and put it on the "Lunch Bunch" poster on our bathroom door.

Here is the sign I made at Vistaprint last summer...

And here it is being used by my Lunch Bunchers...  I'll have tons of friends in for lunch this Friday!

We love "Lunch Bunch".  It gives us a time to eat and have conversation together, work on manners, laugh, and just get to know each other better.  We get to talk about all sorts of random things and, as an adult, nothing is sweeter or more hilarious than listening to conversations between 1st and 2nd graders!

Last year I also had two girls that I ate lunch with every Wednesday in the classroom.  These two girls worked on social skills with me while we dined together.  It was kind of a "fake" situation that I created for one of the girls to be able to make a friend- inviting the one that needed the social skills and the other who I thought could be a good friend to her, and it worked really well!  I plan to begin this with one of my sweeties this week too.  Eating together with kiddos is a very non-threatening way to truly get some good conversation in and work on manners and social skills!

My kiddos get so excited and work so hard to get to come to "Lunch Bunch".  I have one who has taken over 100 AR tests this year (13 gets you "Lunch Bunch") because she just wants to come and eat with me!  She's got sticky notes up on the chart for the next three or four weeks out!

So, if you are able, you should try it!  If you need an incentive for something in your classroom, this is a good one.  And it's a super great way to build community, work on manners and socializing skills, and just have fun with your kiddos!

And, just because, here's a copy of my AR log.  They keep these in their folders in their Daily Five book boxes and just come show me when one side is filled up.  When the whole thing is full, I file it away.  We love pulling them out to see how many tests we've taken!  :)  Now, I don't love AR and that is a totally different rant blog post, but if I have to do it, at least I can enjoy hanging with my kiddos!

On a side note, I just posted a project on Donor's Choose that I would LOVE to have funded!  I've had loads of luck with Donor's Choose thanks to extremely generous people- some who I know and others who are strangers!  I know sometimes they send out random gift cards (my mom got $125.00 in gift cards from them once that she posted to one of my projects!) or offer special promos to earn credits to put towards projects... if you have some laying around and don't currently have a project to fund, I'd love it if you would keep me in mind!  :)  I put a project up to get a Mimio Pad of my own so I don't have to worry about the possibility of potentially having to share the ActivSlate that I'm using in my room!  Yes, I'm being selfish!  This would get me my very own interactive pad so I could ensure being able to keep one in my room at all times!  Anyway, here's a link to my giving page if you do happen to have any codes or unused gift cards- Mrs. Bainbridge's Donor's Choose Giving Page.