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What’s the big idea?
- Breakfast can be the most important meal of the day. But many
children regularly miss breakfast or resort to snacking on crisps
and chocolate on the way to school.
- Breakfast clubs can provide a combination of a healthy breakfast,
early morning childcare and an opportunity for educational and
social activities.
- Breakfast is an ideal opportunity to encourage fruit and vegetable
consumption in the context of a healthy balanced meal.
- Eating breakfast has been shown to improve children's problem
solving abilities, memory and concentration, and help them start
the school day on time, calm and ready for learning.
There are several styles of breakfast club - pick and match and
adapt to suit the needs of your school and pupils. Some breakfast
clubs take place in the school dining hall, while others are in
a community building, such as a church hall. Some are run by the
catering service and a paid supervisor, while others are run completely
voluntarily by teachers and parents. Some provide simply toast and
a drink, while others provide a cooked meal. Some rely on grants
and outside funding, while others are self-financed. Some charge
a minimal amount (usually between 10 and 50p per day), while some
are free and others ask for a voluntary donation. Some put on activities
such as drawing, help with school work and listening to the radio,
others do not.
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Planning a breakfast club
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How many children will eat breakfast at school?
Have a meeting or do a survey to find out how much interest there
is among staff, governors, parents and children.
Find somewhere welcoming, safe and hygienic to serve breakfast.
The dinner hall may be too big for a small group. A classroom
or afterschool activities room may be better.
Who is going to provide staffing? Most schools use existing
teaching, pastoral or catering staff and enlist parent volunteers.
Be sure to have enough adults per children. Although breakfast clubs
will not normally be classified as a formal childcare service the
ratio of 1 adult to 8 children which is required by childcare services
may be a useful one to follow.
Do a business plan. Work out how much it will cost to set
up and run. Decide how much to charge. Look for external sources
of funding.
Promote your breakfast club. Have a competition to choose a
name for the club. Get the children involved in designing posters,
menus and decorations. Invest in tablecloths, games and comics.
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Taking it into the classroom
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Breakfast clubs help children get ready for the school day. Some
schools have used them to add to school learning hours, for example
by:
- Providing books, newspapers and comics to read.
- Encouraging parents to come in to 'feed and read' alongside
their children.
- Providing facilities for and support with homework.
Setting up a breakfast club can also be a focus for classroom work,
for example:
- Surveying breakfast likes and dislikes and presenting the results
in chart form (handling data)
- Designing posters and menus to promote the breakfast service
(art)
- Discussing what food items could create a healthy breakfast
(design and technology)
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Suggestions for a healthy breakfast
Keep it simple and keep it safe in terms of food hygiene
risk. This usually means avoiding cooked items, cold meats
and eggs.
All types of bread (white, wholemeal, granary, brown,
buns, chunks of French sticks, muffins, crumpets etc.) served
as toast or bread.
Don't worry if white bread is initially the most popular.
Slowly introduce the healthier alternatives.
Cereal served with milk
Be aware that most cereals contain added sugar and salt
and those aimed at children tend to contain extremely high
levels of sugar. To judge which are very high in sugar,
the Food Standards Agency says that 10g of sugar per 100g
is "a lot" (most children's cereals are between
20g and 50g of sugar per 100g).
Avoid these varieties, encouraging the less sweet options
such as rice krispies, weetabix, shreddies and shredded
wheat instead.
If these cereals are not popular with the children gradually
introduce them, for example by mixing a sugar-laden cereal
such as frosties with a less sugar-laden cereal such as
shreddies. Also, have a bowl of sugar available so that
children can add sugar to taste. Dried fruit and sliced
fresh fruit, such as bananas or strawberries, are also tasty
sugar alternatives.
Food Standard Agency guidelines on salt are that 0.5g per
100g is "a lot" and 0.1g per 100g is "a little".
If you want to calculate exactly how much salt is in a product
multiply the sodium number by 2.5 - so a product with 0.5g
sodium per 100g has 1.25g salt per 100g. Note that cornflakes,
while containing little sugar, are high in salt (as salty
as sea water!).
Drinks
Fruit juice (can be diluted), water, milk or drinking yoghurt.
Avoid dilute drinks like 'squash', fruit 'drinks', and fizzy
drinks
How to make a fruity breakfast:
- Put a fruit bowl on the tables for the children to help
themselves
- Offer dried fruit, such as sultanas, apricots and prunes,
to add to cereal
- Serve canned fruit (good with yoghurt)
- Prepare fresh fruit salad (perhaps with the children)
and serve (also good with yoghurt)
- Try bananas on toast or in cereal
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Bull Point Primary School re-launched the already existing
breakfast club as a healthy breakfast club. Instead of offering
products such as chocolate spread, biscuits, and squash, which had
been favourites among children, they offered equally appealing foods
such as fresh fruit, yoghurt, fruit juice and smoothies.
Fir Tree Primary School runs a breakfast club every morning linked
to a particular activity, for example keep fit, Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) and video watching. Children are
charged 30p per session and are offered a selection of cereals and
toast, fruit juice and usually malt loaf or French bread. Fir Tree
initially ran their breakfast club as a completely self-funded initiative,
with a team of parents volunteering their help. Because of the success
of the club they applied for a grant from a local breakfast club
initiative and now employ two lunchtime staff to run it.
St. Bartholomew's Church of England Primary School employs four
members of staff using funds from the school budget. They receive
no external funding but get cereal from a sponsor and charge the
children £1 per week. With Grab 5! they introduced a variety
of different fruits and fruit juices to the children by:
- Putting different juices on the tables for tasting
- Providing a range of seasonal fruits
- Supervising the children make fruit salad
- Doing activities related to healthy eating
Wyther Park Primary School reflects:
"Through the introduction of a breakfast club, there
has been an improvement in both attendance and punctuality. Children
are happy to come to school earlier to have some breakfast and
this means that they are entering class at the correct time. It
has also been noted that the pupils' social skills have shown
some improvement. Children are now happy to sit down at the table
and eat with their peers. At first, some of our children found
this quite hard to do. It is important that the children are given
something to play with after they have had their breakfast otherwise
they become disruptive. It also enables parents to bring their
children to school early and go to work".
What is the difference between a club and a service?
Breakfast services are usually run on a commercial basis
by the school caterers. They are open to everyone in the school.
Breakfast clubs are usually run by the school on a not-for-profit
basis. Schools usually seek outside funding, often use volunteer
assistance and, as well as providing food, tend to organise activities
for the children.
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Breakfast Clubs… More of a Head Start, published
by the Scottish Community Diet Project is a comprehensive
guide to the practical issues involved in running a breakfast
club. It is available on their website at www.dietproject.org.uk
(click on toolkits) or phone 0141 226 5261.
