Other activities for children

Ask your group to design a party hat or name badge for someone they know. Their design has to say five things about that person.

Get them to design or make something similar for the person next door or someone they’d like to get to know on their street. They might want to pop round, measure up, take a picture or do a little interview about the kind of party hat or badge their neighbour would like. The final hat would have to say five things about that person too.

Ask the group to do a show and tell about their designs and the person for whom they’ve made the hat or badge.

For The Big Lunch, young people can get together with friends or family to make hats or badges for everyone on their street. At the event, why not take photos of everyone?

The General Mills Company released the first ever singing commercial on Christmas Eve in 1926, with a song about Wheaties, their own brand of breakfast cereal.

Get your group to explore their favourite songs or advertising jingles. What makes a good tune? What makes a good lyric? What makes a good jingle? Could your group write the lyrics of a song or jingle that advertises The Big Lunch? How about a rap or song that talks about the people where they live?
Get someone in from your local radio station to talk about good party songs and jingles. Perhaps they could judge a jingle competition?

Once your group have come up with a jingle or song, could they find out if someone in their neighbourhood plays an instrument or could help them create a piece of music to record or sing at their event?

For The Big Lunch, why not sing or play a song to get the party going. Could your group get their radio jingle played on the local or community radio station?

If you need some inspiration, our friends at the DaCapo Music Foundation have commissioned Hollywood composer John Ashton Thomas to write a song for The Big Lunch called ‘Celebration’. The school children in this video recently performed the song for Big Lunch Ambassador, Barbara Windsor at the Eden Project! Get your group to sing, play and perform it before they try to write their own song.

Download the sheet music and mp3.

Create a table cloth with quiz questions, fun jokes or guessing games. You can buy plain paper table clothes from most supermarkets.

Get the group to design a table cloth which includes cracker style jokes or fun quiz questions on a chosen topic to get conversation started.

Ask them to go home and find five local facts and five quiz questions about their neighbourhood or local community for their table. Could they bring images, name that place questions, do a spot the difference with some old local photos?

Get the whole group to plan and design their tablecloths so that each place setting has some fun quiz questions or jokes. Get the group to set their own table around their design, have a lunch together and ask each other questions as they eat and drink.

This is something young people could make for The Big Lunch, why not include get to know you questions, brain teasers or ice-breaker activities to help people get to know their neighbours better on the big day.

Did you know that the first ever mass-produced posters started in the 1870s? Poster art was pioneered by French artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Chéret. They used litho printing as a way to mass produce their work.

Ask the group to explore their favourite poster adverts, why they like them, what makes them effective, what language they use. Get them to write or design a poster campaign or even make a story board for an advert or poster celebrating what’s great about their street or neighbourhood.

Run a design competition and get someone from the local community to choose the most effective designs.

For The Big Lunch, could they find out who’s running an event where they live and make a poster to help? Could they find out all the names of the families and people in their street and make some invites? Why not pop round to see a few people and ask if they’d put a poster in their window?

Download printable activity ideas.

What about getting kids to grow something simple for the day? Check out The Big Lunch grow your own section. You can also visit these websites with specially tailored information for schools:

Growing schools - Shows teachers how to use the outside as place to teach and offers lots of ideas about what to grow, where and when.

Garden Organic for schools - A nationwide campaign which helps children grow vegetables at school and learn more about food.

RHS for schools - Lots of ideas on how schools can make the most of their school garden, including case studies of what other schools have created.