Our Healthy and Nutritional Menu
The Childerwood Nursery menu is packed full of fresh ingredients and includes a range of dishes that are selected specifically to introduce new flavours and textures to children, while also providing them with local foods to which they would be familiar. Our menus are also updated to ensure seasonality, using a 5-week rotational menu.
Children participate in our mini-food explorer activities where they learn to prepare their own food throughout the week and are taught how to correctly prepare fruit and vegetables by themselves, promoting independence during snack time.
We believe that our role is to support children in making healthy choices about their food as they grow; we aim to achieve this by providing healthy, tasty, varied menus that children can enjoy.
Having undergone food safety and nutritional training, our cook creates menus that are not only nutritionally balanced but also delicious, and loved by the children.
Our Rolling Snack Time
Children enjoy a range of healthy snacks provided by us and we are able to cater to any dietary requirements that your little one may have.
Our rolling snack time runs both in the morning and afternoon; this can be greatly beneficial for the children that do not wish to have their play disrupted during a session. It involves the children choosing when they have snack and often serving themselves, rather than all being seated at the same time regardless of whether they wish to be there or not.
Cooking and the curriculum
We incorporate cooking into our curriculum planning and may share food from differing cultures or to support various topics, events or celebrations. Children are encouraged to participate in cooking activities daily, of which the results are shared with children.
Parents are encouraged to share their cooking techniques with staff. In turn, staff learn to appreciate the diverse cultural skills of the local community.
At cooking times, the nursery practitioner responsible must ensure that a pre-planned cooking objective sheet and risk assessment is completed before children can participate, to ensure dietary and allergy risks are considered and correctly catered for. No changes to the cooking activity can be made once the risk assessment checklist is complete.
Special Occasions
We celebrate special occasions, such as birthdays, with the a cake supplied by the nursery cook (shop brought cakes can be supplied by parents providing allergens are listed on the packaging) this is due to our inclusivity policy which ensures we cater for all dietary and allergy children. These will be given at mealtimes, instead of desert, to miniminse tooth decay and the risk of soiling the children’s appetites.
Where we have frequent birthdays and celebrations, alternative approaches to birthdays will be taken such as celebrating through smiles and praise, making cards, creating picture, stickers, and badges, choosing a favourite story, becoming a special helper, playing a party game, dancing and/or singing their favourite song.
Parents are permitted to supply cakes for special occasions. However, food brought in from parents must meets the above conditions, as well as applicable health and safety requirements, including the the Food Information for Consumers (FIR) 2014 regulation regarding listed allergens.
Food Hygiene Rating
Childerwood Nursery has consistently been awarded 4-5 stars for food hygiene by the Food Standards Agency.
The Food Safety Officer inspecting a nursery checks how well the nursery is meeting the law by looking at the following areas:
- How hygienically the food is handled – how it is prepared, cooked, re-heated, cooled and stored
- The condition of the structure of the buildings – the cleanliness, layout, lighting, ventilation and other facilities
- How the nursery manages and records what it does to make sure food is safe
- At the end of the inspection, the nursery is given one of the six ratings.
Childerwood Nursery has therefore been found to have ‘very good’ hygiene standards.