Ya - it is hard not knowing your space set up what to suggest as best.

For the highchairs - what age are you thinking of using them to - just infants or an infant / toddler age group?

From a staff perspective limiting the weight that they are expected to lift repetitively on a day to day basis is ideal ... or you will get staff off with back and knee injuries

Lifting a 40 pound child in and out of a highchair at home is one thing - and lets face it some infants are well over 30 pounds by a year old and most toddlers pushing 35 plus pounds - so lifting multiple children in and out of highchairs several times a day starts to cause injury - specially when you add to it lifting and stacking the chairs 3 plus times a day as well?

IME this is why most childcare centres only have a few highchairs for very small infants and transition them to a child size table as soon as possible.

There are some styles of table and chairs that are minimalistic ... so they do not take up as much space but can fit 8 children around them - so two of those in a preschool classroom would suit for mealtime and than outside of mealtime one can be set up with sensory activity and the other with creative art options so that the children are actually using that space throughout the day? Sometimes we would stack the chairs and build forts with the tables and kids would play 'under' the table space so that it was being used as well?

Something like this cause you can adjust the height depending on the current age of most of the children making the tables more versatile? And the chairs that match stack nicely to the side when not in use.

http://childcare.scholarschoice.ca/p...36297/pstart1/