Our menu at The Flower Cottage

At The Flower Cottage, we ensure compliance with the Early Years Foundation Stage requirements for food and drink. We offer a wide range of food choices to encourage the children to explore new textures and tastes, while developing good eating habits. Meal times are also an opportunity to support social skills, as we sit together as a group, enjoy our meals, often provide self-serve dishes, pour our own water, and engage in wonderful conversations.

When creating my weekly menus, I take into account input from parents and carers, the child's preferences, and their interests, along with the example menus for Early Years settings for guidance. You can learn more by visiting: Example menus for early years settings in England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Additionally, we provide numerous food tasting sessions throughout each season or during festivals and celebrations.

Regarding weaning, if your child starts the setting at 9 months or older and is continuing their weaning journey, we will discuss their current stage and the foods they have already tried, as well as how we manage this in the setting. I encourage all children to have the same meals, although they may be served differently based on age and the specific meal. For example, while toddlers might have fish fingers, chips, and beans, our under-1-year-olds would be served fish without the batter, mash, and beans.

I complete a weekly shop to prepare for the following week, ensuring I have enough food jars, pouches, purees, formula milk, and baby breakfast. Gradually, I will encourage more solids and transition from baby spoons to safe plastic cutlery and eventually to stainless steel cutlery. Families are kept informed of their child's weaning process, and I strive to follow the home routine as closely as possible to provide consistency.

Below, you will find one of the menus I have created for the setting, along with images of some of our meals.