Meals

We give high priority to providing healthy, well balanced meals. To ensure that we can do this we employ our own full time cook. Right from the weaning stage we try to ensure that children grow up to enjoy ‘healthy’ food and enjoy meal times.

We have contracts with a quality suppliers – G.A. Kelly (Fruit & Vegetables); Hoffmans Butchers; Brake Bros. And Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation for frozen, dried and tinned goods. We aim for 90% fresh ingredients. When using chicken we purchase only chicken fillets and don’t use chicken nuggets or other processed chicken products. Children do like fish fingers and sausages so we have both of these. We buy good quality 100% cod fish fingers and Hoffmans 80% beef sausages.

Children have a good breakfast of cereals and toast, a main meal at lunchtime and tea. The tea is what one would expect if the main meal has been eaten at lunchtime.

A sample menu is given below. Four weekly menus are on display in nursery.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Mealtimes

We aim to make mealtimes an enjoyable experience.

Two to fives is quite a challenge sometimes with the children all needing to use the toilet and wash for lunch at the same time. Staff work hard to an agreed routine to ensure that children are not kept waiting unnecessarily and therefore getting bored and noisy. They are not asked to sit at the table until necessary, for the same reason. Lunch is served in three rooms from three separate trolleys again to avoid waiting. Staff sit with the children and encourage appropriate conversations and table manners. Children are encouraged to try everything on their plate, even if to just touch it on their tongue. Many children have learned to ‘like’ food they haven’t previously liked by doing this.