Policy Statement

 Dragonfly Pre-school regards snack and meal times as an important part of our day. Eating represents a social time for children and adults and helps children to learn about healthy eating. At snack time we aim to provide nutritious food that meets the children’s individual dietary needs.

Procedure

Before a child starts to attend the pre-school, we ask their parents about their dietary needs and preferences, including any allergies. 

 We record information about each child's dietary needs in her/his registration form and parents sign the form to signify that it is correct. 

We display current information about individual children's dietary needs so that all staff and volunteers are fully informed about them. 

 We implement systems to ensure that children receive only food and drink that is consistent with their dietary needs and preferences as well as their parents' wishes. 

We display the menus of snacks for the parents to view. 

 We provide nutritious food at all snack times, avoiding large quantities of saturated fat, sugar and salt and artificial additives, preservatives and colourings. 

We 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. 

We include foods from the diet of each of the children's cultural backgrounds, providing children with familiar foods and introducing them to new ones. 

 We 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. 

Through discussion with parents and research reading by staff, we obtain information about the dietary rules of the religious groups to which children and their parents belong, and of vegetarians and vegans, and about food allergies. We take account of this information in the provision of food and drinks. 

 We require staff to show sensitivity in providing for children's diets and allergies. Staff do not use a child's diet or allergy as a label for the child or make a child feel singled out because of her/his diet or allergy. 

We organise meal and snack times so that they are social occasions in which children and staff participate. 

We use meal and snack times to help children to develop independence through making choices, serving food and drink and feeding themselves. 

 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 session/day and ask parents to bring their water bottle with therm. 

We inform parents who provide food for their children about the storage facilities available in the pre-school. 

In order to protect children with food allergies, we have rules about children sharing and swapping their food with one another and advise parents to provide named packed lunch boxes. 

For children who drink milk, we provide semi-skimmed milk. Packed Lunches We cannot provide cooked meals on our premises so children are required to bring packed lunches; 

We will ensure perishable contents of packed lunches are refrigerated or contain an ice pack to keep food cool. 

We will inform parents of our policy on healthy eating. 

We will inform parents of whether we have facilities to microwave cooked food brought from home. 

 We will encourage parents to provide sandwiches with a healthy filling, fruit and milk based deserts, such as yoghurt. We will provide water and milk. 

We will provide children bringing packed lunches with plates, cups and cutlery. 

 We will ensure the staff sit with children to eat their lunch so that mealtime is a social occasion.

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