Our menu at The Flower Cottage

At The Flower Cottage I ensure that we meet the Early Years Foundation Stage requirements for food and drink. A wide range of food choices are offered to the children to encourage new textures, tastes and develop good eating habits. Supporting social skills throughout meal times is also important, we sit down together as a group, enjoy our meal, often provide self serve dishes, pour our own water and have some wonderful conversations during this period. 

When creating my weekly menus I use the input from parents/carers, child's voice and their interests along with the example menus for Early Years for support, you can read more information by clicking the link here: Example menus for early years settings in England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

I also provide lots of food tasting sessions throughout each season or when festivals/celebrations are happening. 

Weaning:

If your child starts the setting at 9 months onwards and continuing their weaning journey, we will have a discussion regarding where your child is at and the foods/meals that they have already tried and how this is managed in the setting. I always encourage all children to have the same meals but they may just be served differently to the variety of age ranges and depending on what meal is served. Alternative food options will be provided depending on the texture, for example: toddlers may be having fish fingers, chips and beans, however our under 1 year olds will be having fish without the batter, mash and beans. I complete a weekly shop where I will prepare for the following week so that I have enough time to buy food jars / pouches or purees and top up on any formula milk and baby breakfast. In a gradual process, I will encourage more solids and replace the baby spoon, to safe plastic cutlery and then onto stainless steel cutlery. Families are informed of their child's weaning process. I try to follow as much of the home routine as possible in the setting, to provide consistency. 

You will find one of our menu's that I have created for the setting below along with images of some of our meals.