National School Breakfast Week 2024 is almost here!
Each year, we celebrate National School Breakfast Week the first full week in March. It’s a celebration of school breakfast and the positive impact it has on students.
National School Breakfast Week 2024 runs March 4-8, 2024. This year’s theme is “Surf’s Up”, so think beach vibes!
When planning, be sure to check out the SNA website, as they provide a wealth of NSBW 2024 resources. They have logos and marketing resources, an online store, and they usually post activities and other resources closer to the event.
While you’re planning your goals, check out this list of 100 ways you can celebrate National School Breakfast Week 2024, which includes:
Getting Students in on the Fun!
Purchases for this event typically fall under micro purchases (but not always!), so you can read more about choosing the right procurement method here!
However, for those with a limited or no budget for NSBW 2024, there are plenty of no-cost ideas on the list.
Decorations
1. Surf’s Up with School Breakfast posters, banners, and balloons – get your official National School Breakfast Week 2024 decorations from SNA’s shop. They even have Spanish versions of the posters.
2. Print your own NSBW poster – make your own, or print one of these, courtesy of Buying School Food! (18×24) (8.5×11) (Canva Template).
3. Surf-themed window clings – decorate your sneeze guards with window clings on theme.
4. Table decorations – great for decorating serving lines or tables, table decorations are easier to set up than hanging items from the ceiling (and won’t get you in trouble with the fire marshal!). You could go with these surfboards or general beach ones.
5. Bulletin board – create a Surf’s Up with School Breakfast themed bulletin board, using craft supplies, like this kit and letters.
6. Cafeteria doors – decorate the cafeteria door(s) with the Surf’s Up theme, like this one that’s decorated like a tiki hut.
7. Pancake garland – You may be able to make something like this for a better price, but this one is so. stinkin. cute.
8. Surfboard garland – this garland would add a fun touch in the serving line area or out in the dining room. Search Amazon for other beach-themed decorations – they have lots!
9. Bulk balloons – In addition to the official NSBW balloons, you can order bulk balloons from a Walmart or local dollar store or DIY with a balloon kit you order online. These surfing ones would fit the theme perfectly!
10. Breakfast graphs – Display graphs or charts that show students data about your breakfast program. Examples include: number of breakfasts served each day, the percentage of students that take milk at breakfast, or the top breakfast entrees at your school. Bonus points if you can find out from teachers what visual aids would tie in with their current curriculum!
11. Inflatables – The Dairy Alliance has been giving away milk, parfait, and cow inflatables for years. Bust those out if you still have them! If not, you can find breakfast food or surf board inflatables online. Even beach balls would be fun, affordable decor!
12. Barbie & Ken’s Beach – Take advantage of the latest hot movie and decorate with pink beach umbrellas and chairs. You can even buy Ken’s beach costume on Amazon! His job is “beach” afterall.
Dressing Up
13. Embrace the Beach Theme! – encourage staff to dress up with (appropriate) beach gear! Think Hawaiian shirts, grass skirts, lifeguard t-shirts, etc. Bonus points if you can incorporate breakfast foods into your costume.
14. Dress up like a breakfast food – Students always love a mascot. Bust out a silly costume or make one homemade.
15. Silly hat – wear a silly breakfast hat, like this egg beret, this egg headpiece, or find a work friend to wear this donut and latte hat with.
16. Cute Hat – or you can go the cute route and wear a baseball cap with a breakfast theme. I love this milk and cereal hat!
17. Breakfast scrubs – do you wear scrubs as a uniform? Wear one with a breakfast theme!
18. NSBW t-shirts and aprons – get your official NSBW t-shirts and aprons from SNA.
19. Breakfast t-shirt or pin – or get a t-shirt you could wear to promote breakfast all year long. Use exclusive Buying School Food discount code BSF10 to save 10% on either item!
Menu Ideas
20. Breakfast for lunch – serve breakfast for lunch and use it as a way to encourage more students to eat school breakfast. You can do this during NSBW or the week before to generate excitement.
21. Breakfast samples – Pass out breakfast samples at lunch time to show kids what they’re missing if they aren’t eating school breakfast. Be sure to remind them when and where they can get a breakfast.
22. Taste test new breakfast items – if you’re considering adding new items or recipes to the menu, sample them during NSBW. Let students know which day(s) free samples will be available!
23. Food cutouts – Cut fruit or sheet-pan pancakes into beach-themed shapes with cookie cutters.
24. Serve a special item – pick something that you don’t get to offer often. Smoothie bowls, banana split parfaits, apple nachos with yogurt, a pancake bar, oatmeal topping bar, or breakfast fruit pizza are all great options.
25. Rename items on the breakfast menu – this should match the theme! Try “Surfin’ Smoothie”, “Beachside Biscuits”, or “Waves of Watermelon”.
26. Themed Stickers – use themed stickers on cups of fruit or parfaits. Kids are more likely to take an item that has a sticker on it, so use it to your advantage by sticking them on healthy items you want to promote!
Special Guests
27. Local Swimmers – invite people from the swim community to eat breakfast with the students – think a school swim coach, local swim class instructor (check with your YMCA), scuba instructor, etc. They can tell the kids how important it is to start the day well-fueled, as well as promote swim safety.
28. Local Heroes – invite your local veterans, military personnel, EMTs, police, fire fighters, medical professionals, etc. to eat breakfast with students. This is always a welcome gesture!
29. Principal – invite your principal or superintendent to eat with students or act as a guest server for a day.
30. Coach – invite a sports coach or other well-known teacher/staff member to eat with students or act as a guest server for a day. Art and music teachers are often kid favorites too!
31. Local Celebrities – is there someone famous in your community that might come join the students for breakfast? Examples include a radio DJ, news anchor, minor league sports athlete, performers from a local theater, etc.
32. Older Students – high school students could come visit your younger students for breakfast and encourage them to start their day with breakfast. This often works well for sports teams or clubs.
33. Families – if families are permitted to visit, invite them to join students for breakfast one morning. To manage space, you could invite families by grade (ex: K on Monday, 1st on Tuesday) or by last name (A-E on Monday).
34. Manufacturers – invite a representative from recognizable breakfast companies, like Kellogg’s and General Mills to visit for breakfast one day.
35. Elected officials – use this as an opportunity to show off your program to an elected official and remind them of the importance of school breakfast.
36. Farmers – serve a local item on the menu during NSBW and invite the farmer to join the students at breakfast!
37. School Mascot – does your school have a mascot? Ask if they would be willing to come during breakfast one day to mingle with students.
38. Dietitian/Nutrition Educator – check with your local Extension office or health department if any nutrition educators could visit during NSBW. They might be able to help taste test or have visuals to help teach a nutrition topic at breakfast.
Getting Students in on the Fun!
39. Beach photo backdrop – get your students into the theme with a beach-themed photo op! You could pick up some photo booth props too! For best results, do the photos during breakfast and advertise it in advance to get more kids participating!
40. Surfing 3-D Pop Up – alternatively, you could purchase this pop-up photo booth!
41. Pajama day – check with administration to see if they will allow students to wear pajamas on a designated day to honor National School Breakfast Week.
42. Pass out activity sheets – like coloring pages or a word search, from SNA’s website (usually posted closer to the date).
43. Student breakfast survey – ask students to give you feedback about breakfast through a breakfast survey. Ask them what they want to see on the menu and what you could do to get them to eat if they don’t already.
44. Student focus groups – alternatively, you can work with student government to incorporate their feedback into the program. You reach more students with a survey, but working with a small focus group will provide you richer feedback and a two-way discussion. See what ideas they have for increasing breakfast participation!
45. Write surfers letters – ask students to write letters to surfers during breakfast. You could send the letters to an organization like AmpSurf.
46. Before-care activity – does your school have a before-care program? They often are looking for things to keep students occupied. Offer the child care program a breakfast activity to do, like making a waffle sea turtle or funny pancake faces.
47. Student helpers – need help executing all these activities during NSBW? Select students to help, giving them tasks like collecting student surveys or tickets, passing out stickers, taking photos, etc.
Contests
48. Lucky tray – mark/sticker the bottom of random breakfast trays and give prizes to the students who find the mark or sticker.
49. Random drawings – students who eat breakfast can be entered into a drawing for prizes.
50. Punch cards – students who eat breakfast get a punch card on Monday and if they get it punched 3, 4, or 5 times (your choice!), they can win prizes.
51. Prize wheel – students who eat can take a spin on a prize wheel.
52. School-wide participation contest – the classroom or grade with the most students who eat breakfast that week gets a prize!
53. District-wide participation contest – have schools compete against each other to see who can increase breakfast participation the most that week. This works well with older students that are more familiar with surrounding schools and have developed a sense of school spirit.
54. Recipe contest – ask students or classrooms to submit new breakfast recipes leading up to National School Breakfast Week 2024. Prepare the winning recipe during the week!
55. Recipe naming contest – alternatively, you could create a new breakfast recipe and have students or classrooms compete in naming the recipe.
56. Coloring contest – ask students to submit their coloring pages from SNA’s toolkit and pick winners at random or ones from each grade level based on skill.
57. Essay contest – ask older students to write an essay on a breakfast topic, like “describe the perfect breakfast” or “write a fictional story about a student that forgot to eat breakfast”. Be sure to put a word or page range on it, so they write enough but not so much you can’t read them all!
58. Diorama contest – ask students to create a 3-D beach scene out of breakfast foods. The cafeteria staff get to pick the winners!
59. Digging for treasure – bury prizes in a tub filled with sand and allow students that eat breakfast to dig one out. Alternatively, you could write the names of the prizes on slips of paper or on ping pong balls.
60. Branding contest – ask students to come up with a name for your cafeteria, a grab & go kiosk, or a menu item. The winner gets bragging rights and possibly a prize!
61. Social media contest – host a social media contest with students by asking them to post photos of them eating school breakfast with a specific, unique hashtag. Enter them into a drawing so they can win something awesome!
62. Guessing game – fill a large clear jar with a small breakfast food, like Kix or grapes, and have students guess how many are in the jar. Whoever comes closest wins a prize!
63. Riddle – post a daily riddle or trivia question about breakfast and have students submit guesses. Random draw winners from any of the correct responses.
Example Riddle: What does a snowman eat for breakfast? A: Frosted Flakes!
Example Trivia Question: What’s the most popular breakfast item at our school?
Student Prizes
Prizes for students in order to promote your program is generally considered an allowable cost; however, check with your state and local authorities to be sure.
64. Stickers, pencils, or bookmarks – these are generally affordable enough that each student can receive one on a designated day. If your budget is really tight, you can just purchase a few and give them away as prizes for any of the above contests!
65. Fill a cup with prizes – Fill a Surf’s Up with School Breakfast cup with small prizes, like cute erasers and stickers.
66. Free Leis with Breakfast – Give away free leis to students that eat breakfast. When they wear them all day, they’ll be little walking billboards for your breakfast program!
67. A la carte – you may need to seek guidance about giving away a la carte is a prize; however, this is a motivating prize for many students. Many print tickets that students could redeem at lunch. Just be sure there’s a way they couldn’t copy them!
68. Gift cards – Be careful with gift cards, as these are sometimes not allowed. If you are allowed to give away gift cards, document every card you obtain and where it went. For example, you could keep a log that shows you purchased 2 $10 gift cards, they were used for NSBW promotions, and they went to Annabelle Anystudent and Billy Breakfasteater.
69. Big prizes – if there’s money in the budget, buying one or two big gifts to give away can really drum up excitement for your promotion. Items like bicycles, ipads/Kindles, and Nintendo Switches are popular among students.
70. Privilege pass – On the other end of the spectrum for those with no funds in the budget for prizes, ask your principal if you could pass out special privilege passes, like a uniform pass, homework pass, or a front-of-the-lunch-line pass for select winners.
71. Private breakfast with the cafeteria staff or principal – as a prize, give away a chance to win a special breakfast eaten with cafeteria staff or the principal.
72. Private breakfast with friends – for older students, give away the chance to have a breakfast (or brunch!) served to a student and a limited number of their friends, restaurant style. Decorate a table for them, take their order, and serve on real plates.
Classroom Prizes
73. Special meal – offer the chance to win a special meal for the class. To increase excitement, make it something they might not get often, like a grill-out, picnic, or a giant party sub. Just be sure the menu follows the meal pattern and is reimbursable!
74. Special snack – offer the chance to win a classroom snack, like milk & cookies, hot cocoa, fresh-popped popcorn, etc.
75. Reward treasure chest – This has always been our most popular prize for getting teachers to participate. Fill a treasure chest with small items the teacher can give away for good behavior, like cute erasers, pencils, stickers, mini luau notebooks, etc. You can buy a treasure chest online, but I’ve always purchased cheap plastic bins from the dollar store, which works well too!
76. Playground prize pack – this is another fun pack you can put together for items to promote active play on the playground. Include things like rubber balls, jump ropes, and hula hoops.
Marketing
77. Flyers – print and distribute or email information to families, informing them about National School Breakfast Week 2024.
78. Newsletters – if parents regularly receive a school or district newsletter, ask if you could have NSBW featured. Be sure to customize it to let families know how you’re celebrating.
79. District website – ask your district’s webmaster if they would post information about NSBW on the district’s website. Be sure to provide them the info you want posted and an image.
80. Post to social media BEFORE NSBW– leading up to the event, post to your SN program or your district’s social media accounts about NSBW and your plans. SNA has cute artwork you can use. Be sure to tell followers what to expect and how they can celebrate!
81. Post to social media DURING NSBW – throughout the week, continue to post to social media, updating followers how the week is going and what’s more to come.
82. Post to social media AFTER NSBW – at the end of NSBW 2024, post to social media informing followers of the successes of the week and to encourage them to continue to participate in the school breakfast program!
83. Morning announcements – have National School Breakfast Week 2024 featured all week long on the morning announcements.
84. School marquee – ask administration if they would post information about NSBW on the school’s marquee.
85. Press release – issue a press release about NSBW. This lets reporters know what you’re doing and could get you some free advertising through the newspaper or news. Be on the lookout for SNA’s template!
86. Radio announcements – reach out to local radio stations directly. Many local radio stations will feature your message for free. See if any are willing to promote NSBW 2024.
87. Promote at school events – are any school events happening just before or during NSBW? You could set up a table promoting school breakfast at a sports game, performing arts event, literacy night, or even outside of a board meeting, if they’re well attended.
88. Postcards – send home a postcard to families about the importance of school breakfast and how you’re celebrating NSBW.
89. Menu blurb – put a small blurb on your March menu to tell parents what your National School Breakfast Week 2024 plans are.
90. Graphics on menus – Images make your materials more engaging! Use SNA’s graphics on your March menus to help make it stand out.
Engaging Staff
91. Staff competition – hold a friendly competition amongst staff or schools, such as a costume contest or compete to increase participation during the week.
92. Teacher prizes – struggle to get teachers involved? Try offering prizes for their participation. See the section about classroom prizes for ideas.
93. Art project – partner with the school’s art teacher to have students create an art project related to NSBW.
94. English project – partner with English teachers to have students complete a writing prompt related to NSBW that ties into what they’re learning in class.
95. Breakfast benefits – share information with teachers about the importance of students eating breakfast. Combine it with a call to action, like “encourage your students to eat breakfast every morning” or “I serve a bagged breakfast until 9am, so please feel free to send me any student who skipped breakfast.”
96. SN professional development – provide professional development to your School Nutrition staff that highlights the important work they do in serving breakfast, as well as best practices for increasing participation and customer satisfaction.
97. School staff professional development – provide professional development to school staff, like teachers, aides and front office staff on the importance of school breakfast and the impact it has on student performance.
98. Staff certificates – recognize your staff for participating in NSBW with certificates.
99. Staff breakfast – Even more, recognize your staff that participate with a special breakfast.
100. Send thank yous – Be sure to thank your staff and anyone else who helped make NSBW a success!
How do you plan on celebrating National School Breakfast Week 2024? Tell me in the comments below!
