Letter M Themed Lunches

After spending one day per letter of the alphabet, my daughter's kindergarten class began focusing on one letter a week. They started with the letter M and we planned letter M themed lunches for the week. (These lunches are from September, I am WAY, WAY behind on posing!) Monday's lunch was inspired by the book Happy Birthday Moon. It is a story about a bear who gives the moon a hat for a birthday present. The bear places the hat high in a tree so that the moon can "wear" the hat. Later, the wind helps the moon return the hat to the bear and the bear thinks that the moon has given him a gift. So, for this lunch, my daughter had a Moon-shaped peanut butter sandwich wearing a cheddar cheese hat. She also had come blueberries in a bear shaped silicone cup with an orange bear pick, a few moon shaped crackers, a bear shaped egg, cucumber slices on a bear pick, carrots, and some sugar snap peas.

On Tuesday, she had a Map-themed lunch. She requested a pirate's treasure map. I used my sandwich sealer to make the peanut butter sandwich and then used food safe markers to draw on the map. I was attempting to draw a river, pine trees, rocks, a red X to mark the treasure, but drawing on bread doesn't always turn out the best. I used a flag from a Playmobil set for decoration and I used a couple of picks from a cupcake set to hold blueberries and raspberries. Pirates booty sat on top of a few carrots, sugar snap peas, and cucumber. My daughter saw me packing this lunch; she lifted the sandwich and was disappointed that nothing was under the X on the map. So, after she went to bed, I rummaged through her toys to find a small treasure box. I filled it with jelly beans and placed it under the map to surprise her at lunch the next day. I also included this note to go along with her lunch. When she first started kindergarten, I was concerned about what kind of note to include for someone who was just learning to read. I couldn't find any preschool or pre-reader lunch notes to buy. But, her school has really pushed "high-frequency" words (such as: I, like, we, the, a, and, me, look) so I have included lots of notes using these words. My daughter requested that I also include a note on this day with the quote, "Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me." that she remembers from the Peter Pan play we saw earlier this fall. She couldn't read it independently, but I included it anyway.

Snack that day included blackberries with a koala pick, a few peanut butter pretzels, and two homemade strawberry-shaped gummies.

Wednesday's lunch that week was a moose-shaped peanut butter sandwich on a layer of sugar snap peas and carrots. She also had blueberries, raspberries, cucumber slices, a few pretzel Goldfish, and a milk chocolate Milano cookie. This was packed in our panda bento box.

I included a simple note using high frequency words with the moose lunch also.






Snack that day included wagon wheel pretzels, chocolate bunny graham crackers, grapes, and blackberries.

For Thursday, my daughter requested a "Mimi Mouse" lunch. The reading series that her class is using assigns characters to accompany letters of the alphabet and Mimi was the focus for the week. She gave me specific directions to follow this image and we created a peanut butter Mimi Mouse holding colby cheese just like in the picture. I was really glad I had that red bow pick on hand because she was insistent that we include the tail with a red bow. :) Mimi was accompanied by pretzel Goldfish, crackers, blueberries, slices of plum, a Roma tomato (my daughter really wanted it for some reason), red pepper slices, sugar snap peas, cucumber slices, and carrots.

The snack for Thursday included a homemade raspberry gummy star, peanut butter pretzel sandwiches, raspberries and blackberries with a shell pick.

I chose a monarch theme for Friday's lunch because it began with the letter M and because they were learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. In the left hand side of the box, I mimicked the life cycle stages: the sunflower seeds were the eggs, the gummy worm was the caterpillar  the pieces of Mini Wheats were the chrysalis, and the peanut butter sandwich was the butterfly. The other side of the box held slices of apple, blackberries, and cucumber slices.

I taped some butterflies to the lid of the second section and included another simple lunch note.