At The Co-operative Childcare, we regard snack and meal times as an important part of the nursery's day and provide these for all our children within the fee structure. Eating represents a social time for children and adults and helps children to learn about healthy food choices. At snack and meal times, we provide nutritious food which meets our children's individual dietary needs.


Before a child starts to attend our nurseries, we identify their dietary needs and preferences, including any allergies. We regularly consult with parents to ensure that our records of their children's dietary needs and allergies are up-to-date.

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.


We plan menus in advance and adhere to the national statutory guidelines that recommend children over the age of one, until the age of five should eat from a well balanced diet.

Our aim is to keep our menus interesting by including a variety of colour, textures and flavours. If an item of food becomes unpopular it will be replaced. We plan separate menus for the summer and winter and we always display the menus of meals/snacks in the nurseries.

We provide nutritious food for all meals and snacks, avoiding large quantities of saturated fat, sugar and salt and artificial additives, preservatives and colourings.

A variety of foods are included from the four main food groups:

• Meat, fish and protein alternatives
• Dairy foods
• Grains, cereals and starch vegetables
• Fruit and vegetables

We recognise that by educating children from a young age about healthy eating practices we can influence them later in life. By providing children with a rich and varied diet and educating them about the food they eat, we hope to sustain their enthusiasm for healthy eating and enable them to make healthy choices for themselves.

Our nurseries teams aim to give the children the necessary knowledge to make decisions about their own diet, by incorporating healthy eating and self care practices into the curriculum through practical activities and play. The children are given regular opportunities to play with real food and use it through activities such as baking and role play.

The older children are then given the opportunity to contribute to their own healthy lifestyles through choosing between foods at meal and snack times and develop independence through, serving food and drink and feeding themselves.

We provide children with utensils that are appropriate for their ages and stages of development and that take account of the eating practices in their cultures.

The nursery also recognises that meal and snack times represent key opportunities to incorporate elements from the Early Years Foundation Stage. The younger children are given the opportunity to be together with an emphasis upon the social aspect of mealtimes and, for the older children, learning opportunities are extended further through counting cups, plates and cutlery and discussing the origins of the ingredients they are being served.

Throughout meal and snack times children are encouraged to be as independent as possible. Colleagues ensure all children have washed their hands before handling food, teaching them why it is necessary throughout the process. Older children are also given the opportunity to do what they can for themselves, such as setting out the table, pouring their own drinks, buttering their own toast or clearing away their leftovers. Children will be encouraged to develop good eating skills and table manners and will be given plenty of time to eat their meal.

Meal times at the nursery are considered key social times of the day, any colleagues that are not serving food will sit with the children and use the opportunity to have discussions and evaluate what the children feel about their time at nursery so far that day.

We always have fresh drinking water constantly available for the children.


Through a programme of healthy eating and awareness, the children at the nursery are encouraged to think about their dental health when considering what food and drink they are consuming. We also provide toothbrushes and toothpaste for all the children to brush their teeth after lunch time.

For more information on dental hygiene please look at our dental hygiene factsheet (pdf) and download a fun chart (pdf) for your child to use.