NUTRITION
EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTRES
Nau mai ki a tatou akomangaWelcome to our classroom
NUTRITION
Children’s early years are an essential time to help them establish healthy eating habits.
At Leap Ahead Early Childhood Centre we believe in the importance of healthy eating for children and their families. Staff aim to promote, encourage and support nutritional eating habits for all children attending Leap Ahead. Eating experiences provided for children will focus on enjoyment, participation and encouragement of positive healthy eating habits.
Te Whariki: Well-being - Goal 1 - Children experience an environment where their health is promoted.
Our Programme:
- Includes activities that provide children with knowledge, attitudes and skills to make positive healthy food choices and learn about a variety of foods.
- Teaches the importance of healthy food and snacks as part of the curriculum.
- Includes opportunities for children to develop practical food skills like growing, harvesting, preparing, cooking and tasting. ( where developmentally appropriate)
- Supports children and their families to learn about healthy foods and “sometimes” making healthy food choices.
- Considers children’s cultural and developmental differences in relation to food choices.
- Provides fresh, clean drinking water to children at all times and children are regularly encouraged by staff to drink water throughout the day.
Procedure:
- Teachers will provide a positive, appropriate, supervised and social environment for eating.
- Teachers will support children to engage in consistent snack/meal time routines.
- Appropriate self- feeding utensils are available to the children at Leap Ahead.
- Children are supervised during snack and meal times at all times by teachers.
- Food and Drink will be consumed at the tables at all times. The only time we will stray away from the tables is in the event of a picnic.
- Teachers promote and teach basic food safety to children during food learning activities (hand washing, food washing etc.)
- Hygiene soap foam is available for teachers preparing food, the use of gloves at food preparation time is at the teachers discretion,.
- All food will be heated in their original containers or porcelain plates, then transferred to plastic plates.
- Children will be assisted with eating, bottles are to be offered to any child whilst in the arms of a staff member only. Never will a child be put to bed with a bottle.
- Appropriate hand washing facilities are provided for children and teachers.
- Due to the severity of peanut allergies, Leap Ahead is a NUT FREE ZONE. There are no nuts, peanuts or peanut butter kept on the premises and we request that parents do not send peanut products with their children.
- Sterile dishwashing facilities ensure eating utensils are cleaned thoroughly.
- Children’s allergies and food intolerances are documented in our allergy book.
- A record of all cooking, baking and special food events are kept in the day book.
Reference: Education ( Early Childhood Services) Regulation 2008, Regulation 46, Criteria HS19, HS20, HS21 & HS22
More About Us
Our classes are carefully crafted to meet the development needs of each and every child. Our educators and support staff are highly professional and trained.
