What to pack — bag list and tiffin ideas

Two things nobody tells you before the first day: pack a spare set of everything, and a tiffin
that was delicious at seven in the morning may be inedible by ten.

The bag list

• A full change of clothes, including underwear and socks. Not the good ones.
• A second change for Playgroup and Nursery. You will use it.
• A cloth bag for wet things — water play and accidents both.
• A labelled water bottle your child can open unaided. Test it at home first;
  a bottle a child cannot open is a bottle a child does not drink from.
• A labelled tiffin, also openable unaided.
• A small towel or napkin.
• Something of home for the settling-in weeks — a cloth, a photo.

Label everything. Every water bottle in India looks like every other water
bottle by the second week.

Five tiffins that survive till 10 am

1. Idli with a little ghee. Soft, needs no cutlery, forgiving when cold.
2. Paratha rolled with grated vegetable, cut into fingers. Fingers, not
   triangles — small hands manage a cylinder far better.
3. Thepla with a spoon of curd on the side. Travels well and stays soft.
4. Poha or upma, lightly done. A spoon they can actually use.
5. Chapati rolled with paneer bhurji. Protein that is not dry by mid-morning.

Add fruit cut small — banana, papaya, watermelon. Whole apples mostly come home whole.

What not to send

• Nuts. The campus is nut-free. Allergies here are serious.
• Anything needing a knife, or a cutting-up adult.
• Grapes and whole cherry tomatoes unless quartered lengthways — both
  are classic choking shapes for this age.
• Chocolate, biscuits and packaged juice. A sugar spike before eleven is not
  a gift to anybody.
• More than they can eat. A vast tiffin returning full worries parents
  needlessly. Small and finished beats big and abandoned.

The tiffin a child can open by themselves is the tiffin a child eats.