We truly value the role of food in early childhood development and will continue to enhance our nutritional message and menu to ensure that your child gets the very best start in life with their food journey at Childbase.
The nutrition guide for parents explains the key changes made to our menus, new foods introduced and the benefits these bring for children.
There maybe some regional variations to this menu, for further detail please speak to a member of the nursery management team
Providing a balanced, healthy diet for your child requires both expertise and imagination, which is why our menus follow the Governments Early Years guidelines. With this approach we ensure that our food is perfect for your child’s growing body and mind.
Good nutrition sits at the heart of our approach to a healthy lifestyle for your child. Not only do we believe it is essential for children’s natural growth, it’s central to their concentration, learning and development too, helping them get the most from their time at our nursery.
Eating is about more than food: it is a social event too, so the nursery’s practitioners join your child’s mealtimes. This encourages interaction between children, good table manners and development of social skills. It is also the ideal way to offer your child a little help if needed, answer their questions about food and praise their independence.
All our food can be traced along its simple supply chain, which is backed by rigorous quality assurance processes.
Our comprehensive Special Diet Procedure ensures every specific dietary need is met, with minimum fuss and maximum attention to each individual child, whether through medical, religious or other requirements.
Your baby’s transition to solid foods can be challenging, so we will work with you to choose the best time to introduce greater variety in their meals.
Each nursery will work with families to tailor the menu to support children through the weaning process and we offer further guidance on our Childbase@Home website.
You can start weaning when your child is around the age of 6 months.
Your child should be able to:
All babies are different and will hit these milestones at different times. It is best to look out for signs they are ready for weaning rather than sticking to a specific age.
At nursery we encourage spoon feeding to help with the weaning process.
Research suggests that starting babies weaning with vegetables helps them to get used to a variety of flavours early on, and mean they are less likely to reject vegetables as they get older. Offer your baby tastes of single vegetables for the first two weeks, before moving onto combining flavours and offering a variety of fruits, carbohydrates, proteins, herbs and spices.
For the first two weeks try a new vegetable each day. Blend or mash vegetables with some of your baby’s usual milk, or offer them vegetables as finger foods which are very soft. Please ensure you provide finger food cut into sticks and not cut into discs.
Please remember not to add salt when cooking any vegetables.
Below you can see the foods that can be introduced to your baby when weaning:
Please see more about weaning your child on our bespoke parent app and website – Childbase@home. Please ask your nursery for the log in details.
Harry the Health & Safety Hippo works with our kitchen teams and children to ensure that food is healthy and nutritious. Harry features in his own series of books, written and illustrated exclusively for our children, and the ‘Harry and the Giant Pumpkin’ story teaches planting, growing and harvesting vegetables.
