Meal Times
Children love our freshly prepared meals which are delivered to our nurseries every day. Our catering company caters for all intolerances and allergies and their kitchen is regularly inspected by Hertsmere Environmental Health. Each dish on the carefully designed 15-day menu cycle is nutritionally planned to balance food groups and provide the children with a rich variety of tastes and textures throughout the week from different cultures. The nutritious meals avoid large quantities of fat, sugar, salt, artificial additives, preservatives and colourings. Along with three meals a day your child will be offered healthy snacks and will be offered water to drink.
Our nurseries are nut free and we take care not to provide food containing nuts or nut products and we are especially vigilant where we have a child or staff member who has a known allergy to nuts.
As we care for babies from 6 months old, we play a central role in feeding babies and establishing healthy eating habits from an early age. We work in partnership with families to provide encouragement and support throughout their baby’s weaning journey and help to achieve a consistent approach to weaning at nursery and home. Our caterers provide pureed and textured meals for those babies on their weaning journey.
At First Place we regard sharing snack and meal times as an important part of the children’s day. Eating together represents a social time for the children and is a time for developing language skills. It helps them develop them learn how to wait and take turns in conversation, feel valued for something they have said and learn to have a conversation with another child or member of staff. We also use meal and snack times to help children to develop independence through making healthy food choices, using cutlery and feeding themselves.
