Food and Nutrition Policy
Food and Nutrition Policy
At Discovery House Day Care we believe that meal and snack times are the perfect time for children to build healthy eating habits through positive eating experiences. We encourage this by making healthy food fun and tasty.
We empower children to make healthy eating choices by providing a variety of healthy foods and letting them choose which they will eat, if any, and how much they will eat. We provide a morning snack at 10:00 am and afternoon snack at 3:00 pm; children will also be allowed to eat food from their lunch at this time. We do not allow eating between snacks and meals, unless there is a reason a child would be hungry (e.g. child came without breakfast, missed a snack time to go to an appointment).
Parents provide lunch for the children. We are able to re-heat food in the microwave, provide plates and cutlery if necessary, and cut up fruit or vegetables for the children. We do not encourage bringing candy, or other sweet treats, as children tend to fill up on them and not have room for the healthy food in their lunch. We do not restrict children to eat certain foods in their lunch first. We may ask children to finish things they have already opened (such as yogurts) to reduce waste. We encourage parents to send fruit and vegetables instead of juice, and water will be provided throughout the day. We will often cut up half of a fruit at a time to reduce waste.
There is a fridge available and we encourage parents to put lunchboxes in it if they contain any spoilable food, and if they do not have an ice pack in them.
If we have children with allergies we will implement changes in our program as needed.
