Aim of policy:

A significant part of our role at Rainbow is to ensure that children are well nourished whilst they are with us, and that we lay the foundations for providing life-long healthy eating habits.

This policy sets out how staff and team leaders achieve this aim:

Healthy food choices should be reinforced and discussed at every opportunity with the children, this includes, but is not limited to:

• At fruit and snack time
• At circle time
• During activities
• At relevant spontaneous learning opportunities throughout the day
• During cooking and food making opportunities

Involving children

Staff should take every opportunity to involve children in the preparation and serving of food, where children are encouraged to make their own healthy choices. This encouragement should be age appropriate, but will include form a very young age (age 1 and upwards) the opportunity for children to prepare and cut fruit and other snack items. Appropriate supervision needs to be provided at all times when children are using knives, but an over-powering fear of knives by staff should be discouraged by team leaders. Staff should teach children to use knives independently and safely, much the same as scissors.

Children should be given choices by staff in relation to what they want to eat, the quantities they want and how they want to eat, within the scope of the overall food offering available.

At meal and snack times, children should be able to serve themselves from a young age, refilling their own plates when they are ready, with adult support if required.

Adults as role models 

Practitioners working with children provide important role models in making healthy choices around food, meals and snacks. This includes:

• modelling hand washing and good hygiene
• modelling how to eat and prepare food
• modelling healthy choices in food and drink (for example staff are not permitted to bring coke-a-cola into the classrooms as their drink)
• modelling how to use food based utensils such as spoons or forks, depending on children’s age and stage of development
• discussing with children own healthy food and drink choices during relevant discussions and activities

Adults’ role in support meal and snack time

Adults should always sit with children at their level when they are eating. The only exception to this is in the older classes during free-flow snack, it is not always appropriate or required for an adult to be sitting at the table with the children, as they will have developed a high level of independence by this stage, and not require such close adult supervision.

Before and after every meal or snack, staff should ensure that children wash their hands. In the baby unit where there are no children sinks, this should be done using wipes.

It is the adult’s responsibility to ensure that tables are clean and hygienic. There are designated ‘food’ table clothes in every classroom, these MUST be used each time food is served. They should be cleaned and disinfected after use. The practitioner allocated to ‘running’ each food or snack time in each group is responsible for ensuring that this happens.

Whilst staff are sitting with children, they should ensure that they are at children’s level and take time to engage in conversation with children, demonstrating that meal and snack times are sociable and enjoyable.

Staff should never force children to taste, try or finish any food. It is always good to encourage children try new foods, and to eat vegetables, but never to force or insist.

When staff are considering potion sizes, especially at lunch time, the rule of thumb is to provide SMALL servings, and encourage children to take more when they have finished their initial serving. As a guide an initial serving size should be equal to the size of the child’s clenched fist.

Children should have enough to eat, and should not be hungry at gan

Whilst we have a general routine of how and when food is served, it is important that children’s needs are prioritised, and that staff and team leaders ensure that all children are well-fed and not hungry whilst at gan. This may call for some flexibility at times. Here are some examples:

• When a child is too tired at lunchtime to eat their food, they could sleep first, and staff should plate up two portions for the child to eat when they wake up
• A child sleeps through afternoon snack, and wakes up hungry, so staff re-set up a small snack option for this one child to be able to eat
• A child enters gan and has not eaten at home in the morning before gan, so the staff bring some fruit and a rice cake from the kitchen

We expect children to eat breakfast at home before the gan day starts, we do not offer a breakfast alternative.

In most groups the daily eating routine is as follows:

Morning snack, usually between 8-9am consisting of either fruit and a complex carb (eg cracker, rice cake) or sliced vegetables, with wholemeal bread and tehina. This is prepared in the kitchen by the housekeeper, and brought to the classroom either by the housekeeper or a team member. Staff must ensure that fruit and vegetables have been washed

Lunch is served between 11:15 and 12:30 depending on class and colour group. The lunch is prepared by an outside caterer and is cooked freshly each morning. It arrives to the gan in metal containers and is packaged in a polystyrene boxed, labeled with the name of the class. The food should be taken to the classroom from the lobby by one of the class team. Children usually eat in two cohorts within the class; with the red and blue group on the first sitting, and the Green and Yellow on the second sitting. Staff MUST ensure that where there are two sittings the dinning area is appropriately cleaned, and welcoming for the second sitting of children.

Afternoon snack arrangements vary slightly in each class, but are usually served on a rolling basis from when children wake up until 3pm. All afternoon snacks should be finished by 3pm. Afternoon snack will often include the product of any cooking activities that the children have taken part in during the morning (eg – muffins etc), and either fruit and a complex carb (eg cracker, rice cake) or sliced vegetables, with wholemeal bread and tehina. This is prepared in the kitchen by the housekeeper, and brought to the classroom either by the housekeeper or a team member. Staff must ensure that fruit and vegetables have been washed

Some groups eat again before sometime during the 4:00 to 4:30 slot. This may include dried fruits, or the cooking that the children have baked during the day. Fresh apples are also served in some groups. It is essential that children wash their hands even prior to eating any end of day snack. On Thursdays challah is served at the end of the day.

Contents of food

Our food is cooked and prepared fresh, everyday. We have created a diverse range of exciting meals that are wholesome and nutritious. We avoid anything with added sugar or salt, and do not add it to our own meals, or cooking activities.

We do not serve any meat in the nursery, nor do we allow meat to be brought onto the premises. This means that any families who wish to keep milk and meat separate can confidently use our provision, knowing that these dietary requirements are maintained. This also means that staff are not permitted to bring in any meat products in their own lunches. 

Our menus are carefully planned to ensure that children are able to obtain the right levels of iron and protein from other sources within the menu offering.

Our food contains nothing processed, everything is freshly prepared, and freshly delivered. We use only seasonal vegetables, and raw ingredients to prepare our meal and snacks. Therefore it is important that staff do not add things into food or create ‘extra’ menu items without checking with team leaders or managers first.

We have a guide menu, which we follow, on a two-week cycle, but this can often changed, based on the fresh vegetables and subject to our suppliers deliveries we sometimes change things around. The catering team also gathers daily feedback from each group and often makes incremental changes based on children’s preferences. Our lunches include rice, lentils, beans, patties, fish, polenta, pulses, cooked and baked vegetables, and exciting combinations of food! We also cater for any specified diets, such as gluten free, vegan, no-carb etc!

There is a ‘Food Monitoring’ Whatsapp group for staff. The class phone in each room is a member of this group. Any feedback from staff about the food provided that day should be added to that group, ideally with pictures. This could include what children liked or did not like, feedback on quantities of food, or feedback on the way food was cooked, sauces provided or not provided, or anything else that could help improve the quality of the food offering. Where possible photos should be included.

A daily message is sent out to parents by the team leader, and this should always include details of the menu and food offering of the day.

Allergies and dietary requirements

Staff in each room MUST ensure that they are aware of dietary requirements and food allergies. These will always be displayed on a poster in each room, on the staff notice board.

Ground rules for meal and snack times

• Children can only eat food at tables in the designated food eating areas
• Children cannot leave the table, or classroom with food, at all, at any time. This includes leaving the classroom on a Thursday afternoon with challah. All food must be consumed in the classroom at the designated space (we do not offer take-away services).
• Children and staff must always wash their hands before and after any kind of food consumption or preparation
• Children cannot go to their beds after lunchtime dirty, They must be properly cleaned, and clothes changed if required. Ensure they are not left wet from washing themselves
• Children can eat with their hands if they wish, and should never be made to use utensils in a specific way
• Children can leave the table when they have finished eating and should not be ‘held’ at the table for any period after they have finished
• Children should never be forced to eat something they don’t want or like
• Children should be encouraged to be as independent as possible for their age and stage stage of development
• As soon as children can walk, they should remove their own plate from the table, scrape leftovers into the bin, and place their plate any any utensils into the assigned pales or buckets
• Children should only sit at clean and hygienic tables and chairs, this includes children on any ‘second’ sittings
• Tables must be covered with designated ‘food’ table cloths whenever food is served or available
• Staff must monitor children’s food intake, and record any concerns

Weaning



This is the process when babies transition from milk to ‘real’ food.

When babies start weaning, their meals  can be pureed or mashed accordingly, although we prefer (with parents’ permission) to provide children with foods that they can ‘hold’ if so that we follow the ‘self-weaning’ method. We will discuss weaning in detail with parents.

Staff should not start giving children ‘tastes’ of food until this has been discussed and agreed with parent. The general rule for weaning is no more than one new food per day. This way staff and parents can monitor children’s reactions to the new foods they are trying.

Drinks

Every child also has their own ‘water bottle’ (or cup!) that is filled up with fresh drinking water. This must be constantly available for children throughout the day on the drinks trolleys in the classrooms. In the classrooms for the older children instead of using their own cups, they have water fountains in the room, for use during the day, and at meal and snack times, we provide regular open top drinking cups and jugs of water. We only serve water at the gan, and do not have juices or any other drinks

Water should always be available to children whilst they eat their lunch, and have any snacks.

During the COVID period, drinking fountains are out of use, and all children have personal bottles.

Food and snacks before and after gan

We need to remind parents that it is normal and natural that the children will want to eat shortly after pick up. However, we ask that parents do not open food or start to give snacks whilst on the gan premises. Parents must wait until they have left the premises fully (and ideally crossed the road) before they  provide any food or snacks to your children. It is the staff’s responsibility to enforce this rule, and remind parents of this when appropriate.

If children arrive at gan still snacking, they must finish their food outside (on the street, not in the buggy parking area), and may not enter gan until they are finished.  We ask parents to avoid removing snacks from children just before entering the building in the mornings, as this can make children very upset, and provide for an unsettled start to the day. We therefore advise, that parents allow their child to finish snacks well before arriving at the gan gates. There are some very pleasant steps across the road, next to Maze 9, which could provide a lovely seating area for finishing off snacks prior to approaching the building. Staff need to ensure that this happens.

Where parents are serving their children with sugary or other inappropriate foods directly before entering gan, this should be raised with the team leader, and discussed with the parents. The team leaders will discuss with parents how to make healthy food choices in the mornings which will have a positive impact n the children’s morning.

Children bringing in food to gan

This is strictly prohibited. Children are not permitted to bring in food in their bags or buggies, or eat their own food during the nursery day, If any staff identify this, the food should be immediately disposed of, the team leader should be informed and a voice note feedback sent to the parents.

There are rare exceptions to this rule, where a child may be under nourished. Any exceptions will have been discussed and agreed in advance by the nursery manager, and communicated to the care team working directly with the children.

Baby milk 

Parents will provide baby milk to the gan for their child. This may be formula milk or breast milk. Where breast milk is provided, this should be stored in a fridge, and guidelines on storage and feeding should be followed. Milk is usually only provided within the baby unit (Penguins), but may also be provided to some Toddler children (Tigers) if they have milk after lunch before their afternoon sleep. Any other parents wishing to bring milk, would need to have this agreed in advance with the manager.

Staff should not feed a child milk that has been provided for another child. If milk runs out, the parents should be informed and asked to come to the gan.