Getting Fussy Kids to Cook, Eat & Move

The early years are a time when food habits are being developed.  As parents, educators and carers, we believe it’s our responsibility to guide our children towards sound food habits. Food should not only be nutritious but also meet the social, cultural and educational needs of children. Indeed, one of our four key Best Start to your child‘s pillars is healthy nutrition and is something we focus on each and every day.

Healthy Meals at Kids Club

Our Club Kids spend most of the day with us and eat many meals and snacks away from their home.  Our Chefs are passionate about providing the best food for them but they also want to transmit the love of cooking. No processed food or sugary drinks in our kitchens!

A day in the life of our in house Chefs starts with ordering high quality fresh and seasonal ingredients they will need and start preparing morning tea and lunch. All of our Centres have their own commercial kitchens.

Our Chef Ben from our Kids Club Surry Hills commercial kitchen tells us more about our nutrition practices:

“We want to encourage our children to meet their own nutritional needs through tasty nutritious meals. We put a lot of efforts in our menus and prepare everything on-site and fresh on the day”

Every meal includes the necessary food groups and follows the recommendations made by Healthy Kids NSW:

Bread, Cereals, Rice and Pasta

• We use high fibre varieties like wholemeal bread, pasta and flour, brown rice and they like it. No complaints about not having white bread which is much less nutritious being refined and deprived of all the nutrients of the cereal.
  We highly recommend you start going wholemeal at home if you haven’t done it yet.

Fruits and Vegetables

• Our Chefs are magicians and make children eat vegetable at every meal. They hide them everywhere 🙂

This is a secret we’d loved to share with you: make savory muffins and add grated carrots to them, or pumpkin, zucchinis, peas, corn… Today the Chef is preparing Chili con Carne and blended garlic, onions, celery, tomatoes, kidney beans in the sauce: no harm, no foul, no complaints!

• A large array of Fruit is served at every meal, morning and afternoon tea. The children love the colours and the portions already prepared.
• All sorts of preparations such as purees, smoothies make an interesting change of taste and structure?

Meat and Dairy

• Our young vegetarian patrons will not eat the meat in the Chili con Carne, so the Chef will add more vegetables or legumes to their dish. We offer various protein and iron sources in the menu, changing every day between red and white meat, fish or eggs.
  If there is a religious veto, the meat will be replaced by other vegetables or legumes.

• Dairy products, milk, yogurt and cheese are served once a day at least, sometimes at every meal

• Water at every meal! Water prevents future teeth problems, tap water helps to develop strong teeth and there is no sugar and not fat.

Did you know your child could cook?

Cooking is a wonderful way to teach the children healthy foods and nutritional habits, so we offer our Club Kids cooking lessons once a day and they love it!

This week, we’ve been doing pasta. On Wednesday the Chef showed us how to make the dough and the children just loved pouring flour on the bench top and mixing it with an egg, water and salt. Pasta making is so simple, it’s all child’s play 😉

The day after we got the pasta machine out and created our spaghetti and spaghettini, we took turn introducing the dough in the machine, turning the crank and pulling out the pressed dough or spaghetti.

The children couldn’t wait to taste their dish the day after. Markus who doesn’t come every day said he would ask his mum if he could come anyway!

Chef Ben has been asking for the children’s help for many projects such as savory and sweet muffins that they could eat warm from the oven for afternoon tea, cutting the fruit in nice patterns or baking cookies.

Food can be a great source of pleasure and curiosity for children and babies. Our role is to respond enthusiastically to children’s interests and to promote a positive attitude to eating healthy foods. By teaching them how to cook and introducing children to a wide range of foods from the five food groups, and from a variety of cultures, Kids Club’s Chefs can help children to enjoy healthy eating.

Go ahead, take some easy recipes and cook at home with your children, they will be great memories for them! Being involved in the process means they will also be more likely to eat their own creations.

Eat, Move and Grow at Kids Club

We follow the National Quality Framework for Early Education and Care. All our practices and policies address issues of nutritional balance, mealtime environment, food hygiene, safety and individual dietary needs including allergies.

After meals and teas, children participate to our Munch and Move Program: all about encouraging them to get up and move after eating some healthy food. This includes anything from throwing or kicking balls, sliding, jumping or running.

Our parents inform us of any special diets, food allergies or religious requirements their child may have so that we can cater accordingly..

We encourage parents to take time to feed their children breakfast at home as it is a very important part of the child’s day, however, breakfast is also provided.

Weekly menus are displayed outside the kitchen and are rotated monthly. We welcome inputs for different recipes or cultural meals. As much as possible, we attempt to cater for individual likes and dislikes, whilst incorporating multicultural tastes and diets.

P.S – Would you like to visit our Centres? Book your tour now! Call us on 1 300 543 725

Kids Club Childcare is known for having the most beautiful Early Childhood Education centres in Sydney and the ACT. View a virtual tour here. We believe the best start to your child’s future begins at Kids Club. A statement based on our commitment and practices in (4) key areas: Child-Led Learning, Stimulating Environments, Healthy Nutrition and Experienced Educators.