If your child stays for lunch please include a balanced diet of food they enjoy, ie. Sandwich, yoghurt, fruit/salad and treat. There is always the choice of milk or water if you do not include a drink, also please cut all grapes, large blueberries and tomatoes as they can present a choking hazard.
Some useful links to lunchbox advice and ideas
Healthy Lunch ideas:-
Don’t forget we are trying to ensure are children are healthy and maintain good eating habits.
Here are some ideas to try:
- Include small selections of things your child likes
- It doesn’t always have to be sandwiches
- Sometimes just meat and cheese or vegetables and fruit is fine
- Try to offer variety (ham sandwiches every day can be boring) !!
- Cut crusts off too because a lot of bread can be daunting
- Try and include a mixture of savoury and sweet, crunchy and soft
- Always include fresh fruit or veg, we will cut /peel anything here to help encourage them to eat things (brown fruit is not appealing)
- If it is something new let us know so we can encourage them further
- Try to avoid high fat/salt/sugar items
– Pepperami’s
– Fridge raiders
– Dunkers
– Lunchables
– Pies
– Sausage roll - These are all high fat and salt items with low nutritional value. These are fine every so often but home prepared food is much better as it is not processed. Made by you is always better than made by someone else.
- Sticky sweets, fizzy drinks and lollies are not allowed at nursery as we can’t clean teeth here. This is obviously is essential after high sugar items so please avoid them.
- For safety please cut grapes and sausages and similar items (lengthways) as these are a recognised choking hazard and have caused many fatalities.
- Please note that we have some severe nut and egg allergies in nursery, please help us keep children safe by NOT including any Nuts or nut products or any fresh cooked egg products. in your children’s lunch boxes, we really appreciate your support in this matter
- We do have books and information sheets on great lunch box ideas which we find the children like. Please ask if you would like some help with this.
Some Ideas-for lunchboxes
Sandwich, bread, naan, brioche, croissant, wraps, chapatti, flat bread, bagels
Cold meat, nuggets, goujons, veggie nuggets, mozzarella sticks etc, sausages, ham, salami, chorizo, cheese, sushi, prawns.
Waffle, wedges, fruit bread, pancakes, pizza, falafel,
Crisps, breadsticks, crackers, cheese straws, poppadum’s, prawn crackers, tortillas, rice cakes, pretzel, popcorn.
Sweet or savoury muffins, quiche, wontons, spring rolls, bhaji , pakora, poori, pizza
Vegetables, dips, olives, pickles,
paneer, halloumi,
Pasta, rice, salads, couscous, noodles, indomie.
variety of fresh fruit
Yoghurt, rice pudding, jelly, mousse, custard, kulfi, barfi, gulab, etc. halva
(No Nuts),
Cake, biscuit, chocolate, flapjack cereal bar, muffins, brownie, tiffin, traybakes etc.
- Containers- With a view to reducing our use of single use plastics,
- try to use small containers, that your child can open independently.
- lunch boxes are stored in the fridge so please consider the design/choice of lunch boxes as large boxes with elaborate designs are difficult to fit in our fridge space.
A classic square lunch bag is ideal in size and are easy for the children to carry, Please nothing padded or furry as this is unhygienic. (click on the link below for ideas, “Top tips for a healthy lunch”).
Please avoid complicated bento boxes with assorted compartments, as these are tricky for children to open independently. We help the children, decant their lunch onto plates and it means touching all the food whilst we try and tip out the bits we want. We have not got space (like in school to eat out of their lunch box on the table). We eat family style at the table with the children and help the children select the healthy options first, so we generate the conversation about healthy eating and other food related discussion. The children will wash their own plates afterwards.
See our blog post on top tips for a healthy lunch for more information.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/foodanddrink/news/whats-the-formula-for-the-perfect-lunchbox-we-asked-nutritionists-and-a-dietician/ar-BBIBmhF?li=AA9SkIr&ocid=ientp
https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/food-labelling.aspxhttps:/
/www.firststepsnutrition.org/eating-well-early-years/Packed lunches PDF also find here a PDF on healthy snacks