Nursery Meals

Mealtimes are important!

Nursery meals and snacks are an important part of the day at Pride & Joy. They present the opportunity for social interaction between children and adults. As well as the chance to teach the children about healthy eating.

We use meal and snack times to help children to develop their independence. This is achieved by children making their own choices. By serving food, drink and also feeding themselves.

The Pre-School Learning Alliance has extensive resources and materials which are available to us. This enables us to promote healthy eating.

Before a child starts at nursery, we ask their parents about their dietary requirements, including any allergies. With this information we provide nutritious food which is consistent with each child’s dietary needs and preference, as well as parents’ wishes.

We also:

  • Record information about each child’s dietary needs in the Registration Form and parents sign the form to signify that it is correct.
  • Regularly consult with parents to ensure that our records of their children’s dietary needs – including any allergies – are up-to-date. Parents sign the up-dated record to signify that it is correct.
  • Plan menus in advance, involving children and parents in the planning.
  • Display the menus of meals/snacks for parents to view.
  • For each child under two, we provide parents with daily written information about feeding routines, intake and preferences.
pride-and-joy-day-nursery

We care about what your child eats

All our nursery meals and snacks contain nutritious food. We make a point of avoiding large quantities of saturated fat, sugar, salt, artificial additives, preservatives and colourings.

We also:

  • Include a variety of foods from the four main food groups:
    • meat, fish and protein alternatives;
    • dairy foods;
    • grains, cereals and starch vegetables; and
    • fruit and vegetables.
  • Include foods from the diet of each of the children’s cultural backgrounds, providing children with familiar foods and introducing them to new ones.
  • Take care not to provide food containing nuts or nut products and are especially vigilant where we have a child who has a known allergy to nuts.

In order to protect children with food allergies, we discourage children from sharing and swapping their food with one another.

  • For young children who drink milk, we provide whole pasteurised milk. Although we slowly introduce semi-skimmed milk from the age of two years, firstly into meals and dishes, such as on cereal or in white sauces, before being offered as a drink, so that the transition is gradual.
  • We have fresh drinking water constantly available for the children. We inform the children about how to obtain the water and that they can ask for water at any time during the day.