Help Lunch bunch students get to know each other by using icebreakers. Icebreakers are short, little prompts that engage participants in learning about each other and sharing. Ask students to write down their favorite foods, the food they dislike the most, the weirdest or grossest thing they've ever eaten, if they prefer salty or sweet foods and a food item they've made themselves or helped an adult prepare. Have students write their answers on a piece of paper. The facilitator reads each answer, one-by-one, and participants guess who wrote it.
To help participants engage in free conversation, create a collection of conversation topics or prompts. Write down ideas on index cards, such as "Favorite Summer Vacation," "Sport I Love to Play or Watch" and "Things I Do For Fun." Form partners and give each group a topic or place index cards in a bag or bowl and have groups draw a topic. Set a timer and have partners discuss the topic for 5 minutes. Switch groups and discuss a new topic, repeating until everyone has had a chance to partner together or time is up.
Have students play short and simple games. Select games that don't require a lot of preparation and that players are familiar with, such as checkers, memory or card games. Provide participants a selection of board games and allow groups or partners to choose one to play.
Make simple crafts as a group, encouraging participants to share supplies and ideas. Rather than providing each participant a set of materials, ask students to share community items. Provide basic instructions for making a craft, but ask that participants work together to come up with solutions or share information that they may have missed.
Place lunch bunch participants' names in a jar. Use this jar to draw names when partnering or creating groups. Having a preplanned method for randomly grouping students will be handy for the facilitator. It'll also help students to get to know everyone in the group, rather than selecting the same partners each time.