Who Provides Snacks During Preschool Class?

One snack per child, per class, per day? That adds up!

One of the best choices you can make is deciding who provides snacks in preschool, and you’ll be shocked at who it is!

Make Providing The Snacks A Super Fun And Exciting Experience

Providing snacks for every preschool student in every preschool class is a costly endeavor so don’t plan to make that a part of your preschool business expenses. Instead, make snack time a fun activity by utilizing a Snack Bucket.

A Snack Bucket is a clear plastic, see through tote with a handle, that can be found at stores like Walmart and Target. Decorate the lid of the Snack Bucket and label it with the words Snack Bucket. Each student gets the chance to take the Snack Bucket home and fill it with 2-3 weeks’ worth of their favorite snacks to bring back and share with the class. Instructions to the parents will be clearly affixed to the side of the Snack Bucket.

To make this experience even more magical, before sending the tote home with the child, add a Student of The Week Poster for them to fill out with their parent’s help and return with the snacks. When they bring back the snacks they also get to be Student of The Week and the class will get to learn things about them like their favorite color, favorite song, favorite ice cream flavor, their mom’s/dad’s names, their sibling’s names, their birthday, and other exciting stuff!

The Snack Bucket paired with the Student of The Week Poster will make the day the student gets to take home the snack bucket pretty much the best day in the child’s life. They will be excited which will help the parents get on board with the Snack Bucket idea.

How Often Does A Student Bring Home The Snack Bucket?

Depending on the size of your class the child will usually bring home the Snack Bucket 2-3 times a year. If there are 36 weeks in your school year and you have 12 students in your class, each student would bring the snack bucket home once and fill it up with 3 weeks’ worth of snacks. But, if there are only 6 students in your class, each child would bring the Snack Bucket home twice to fill with 3 weeks’ worth of snacks. These times would be spaced out so it would be once in the fall and once in the spring. If you have multiple children from the same family, each STUDENT gets to bring home the bucket.

What About Allergies?

If a student has an allergy (peanuts, gluten, dairy, etc.), that student’s parent needs to provide snacks for their own child and that child’s name is removed from the snack list rotation. The child’s snacks then go into a well-labeled basket and are kept ONLY for them.

In addition to the label on their own personal Snack Bucket, everything else needs to be labeled as well: the sign out sheet, the child release form, the student info sheet, and the class Snack Bucket all need to include the information about the allergy. This way, if there is ever a substitute for the class, they won’t accidentally miss seeing the warning about the allergy.

NOTE: With a peanut allergy you might consider making the child’s classroom or maybe even the entire school peanut free just to safeguard against any adverse reactions to the allergen.

Too Many Snacks? Too Few Snacks?

If a student returns the Snack Bucket with too many snacks for the three-week period, set those extra snacks aside for later use. The only exception to this rule is if the child brought in a special snack such as birthday cupcakes and there were several of them left; those would be returned to the parents.

If the child returns the Snack Bucket with too few snacks for the three-week period, never ask the parent to bring more snacks. Just thank them for what they did bring and use your surplus snacks to make up the difference.

(Pro Tip: Always keep a box of Goldfish crackers on hand just in case you need a backup snack.)

Using this fun method for your students you will never have to be concerned with who provides snacks during preschool class!