Ideas For Snack Time

[AnonyMouse_705]

Does anybody have any menu planning ideas for snack you wouldn't mind sharing?

 

I'd like to draw up a list of ideas to make our Friday planning easier as we have so much else to discuss and by the time we get to thinking about what to buy for snack we all struggle to come up with ideas.

 

Here are a couple of ideas we have used recently to whet your appetite!!

 

Ritz crackers spread with cream cheese (children do this), topped with a slice of apple and clementine and topped with another cracker - delicious!!

 

Tinned spagetti with dinosaur toast.

[Guest]

when I worked in a nursery the children loved pizza muffins, english muffins cut in half with tomato puree and cheese on top then grilled.

 

they also really liked pitta pockets

 

their all time favourite which we would never serve now becuase of how unhealthy it probably is, was eggy bread!!

[AnonyMouse_13453]

Golly those are big 'snacks'. Ours just have choice between chopped up apple, satsumas, raisins, grapes, carrot etc we find they don't eat their lunch if they have too much for snack

[AnonyMouse_705]

Thank you for your quick replies. I can see that they do sound like big snacks Cait, in fact the spaghetti would be about a tablespoon in a bowl with a dinosaur cutter cut out of a half a slice of bread (and sometimes a sprinkling of grated cheese).

 

We too have made pizza's using muffins and bridge rolls (good for pirate boats using sandwich flags as flags) and topping with chopped ham or cheese.

 

For afternoons children could also have half a crumpet with a slice of fruit.

 

We try to make sure snack is taken mid morning so that children are not too full to eat their lunch.

 

When we offer a choice of fruit or veg we try to make sure they have a small amount of carbohydrate as well. Sometimes we put a spoonful of dip onto individual plates with a selection veg and a breadstick.

 

We had loads of milk last term so we made rice puddings and milk jellies too.

[AnonyMouse_705]

Hi Rapunzall

 

Your eggy bread reminded me of cinnamon toast. That could make a tasty afternoon snack with a slice of apple.

 

Toast the bread, butter it, sprinkle on a mixture of sugar and cinnamon sparingly (3 parts sugar to one part cinnamon) and toast under the grill to melt slightly.

[AnonyMouse_13453]

We have carbohydrate snack in the afternoon - crackers and cheese and sometimes hula hoops - one on each finger for counting. We used to have toast but the fire officer told us we shouldn't have a toaster as our kitchen isn't a fire contained area. As I'm coeliac and we've had coeliac children too, I'm always very aware of the carbohydrate aspect of snack.

[AnonyMouse_22106]

Taking account of allergies etc some of our offerings besides fruit have been:

 

toast bagels and cream cheese crackers and cheese crumpets scotch pancakes muffins crusty bread and butter breadsticks and the most enjoyed of all are various cereal.

[Guest]

after getting tired of thinking every week of what to do for snack and asking for ideas and not many coming through i sat at a staff meeting and asked for suggestions as to how i could change the way i did it one member of staff that isn't usually very assertive suggested that each member of staff thought up snack for each week on rota (they even buy it now and get reinbursed on the monday) ITS WONDERFUL to have this thought process taken off my shoulders and it's even better to have such a variety of snack and other peoples input!

[AnonyMouse_8282]

after getting tired of thinking every week of what to do for snack and asking for ideas and not many coming through i sat at a staff meeting and asked for suggestions as to how i could change the way i did it one member of staff that isn't usually very assertive suggested that each member of staff thought up snack for each week on rota (they even buy it now and get reinbursed on the monday) ITS WONDERFUL to have this thought process taken off my shoulders and it's even better to have such a variety of snack and other peoples input!

 

What a good idea........... think I might try that, as you say sometimes you can be suprised by other people- often the quite ones.

[AnonyMouse_22106]

Yes we introduced a staff rota last year, we do it monthly - not all the staff think it's a good idea though

At least it takes the pressure off one person as it's quite time consuming do the shopping all the time, and as you say people have different ideas.

[Guest]

We too do ours on a rota. It is planned in on the Friday, each member of staff writes down what they wish to give on their designated snack day, however we are restricted to fruit, as Cait mentioned and the odd bit of cheese and crackers.

 

While we are on the subject of snack, do you allow your children things like raisins and grapes? Our children love raisins but our manager is concerned about cross contamination of children helping themselves at the snack bar, ditto the same with grapes.

[AnonyMouse_13453]

While we are on the subject of snack, do you allow your children things like raisins and grapes? Our children love raisins but our manager is concerned about cross contamination of children helping themselves at the snack bar, ditto the same with grapes.

 

When we do raisins we use egg cups that I bought on ebay. We pre-fill the egg cups (actually about half full) and I guess it would work with grapes. I snip these into little bunches.

 

A few years ago we had a parent who asked us to slice the grapes into 4 as she felt they were a choking hazard - does anyone do this? I used to cut her child's grapes up, but don't generally do it.

[Guest]

When I first worked at the pre-school I remember being asked to cut grapes up into small pieces as the then supervisor had concerns about choking. Since I have been back there, we have only had grapes a couple of times and they have been presented in much the same way as you Cait, in little bunches in seperate bowls for the children.

[AnonyMouse_705]

Hi thanks for all your replies.

 

I like the idea of having a weekly snack rota - I will suggest that at the next staff meeting.

 

With regard to grapes and raisins, we offer both. Raisins are in a bowl with a teaspoon for children to serve themselves. Grapes are also in a bowl and children are asked to take two (counting). We would cut the grapes up for a certain child who couldn't cope with whole grapes but not otherwise.

 

As for cross contamination, I think that could apply to anything, crackers, chunks of cheese which are all in a bowl for children to choose from in our settings. As we all know children do not always pick up the first one they choose, despite instructions from staff

 

How do other settings deal with this issue?

[Guest]

I don't know if this is any use to anyone.....

 

 

We have a visual menu on the snack table. The Smiley on the A4 is the basic laminated sheet with two vertical rows of sticky velcro applied.... then we use the 'hands' to indicate how many pieces the children can take (applied to the left hand strip) and the images of the available snacks on the righthand side of the board. We also have a visual picture of 'have you washed your hands stuck to our Argos water dispenser similar to this (http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2930415/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CGifts%7C14417351/c_2/3%7Ccat_15701511%7CMini+fridges+and+water+dispensers%7C14417431.htm).

 

Everything is laminated and stored in a little box for us to dip into once we know what the rota'd parents have brought in on the day.....

 

For those of you with non-nut allergy children cheerios go down VERY well!

counting_on_fingers.doc

grapes.doc

handful.doc

snack_images.doc

Snack_table_sign.doc

[Guest]

Hi,

 

Just a quick thought on grapes. I never used to cut them up apart from for the very young children until I went on a first aid re-fresher course. The man leading the course said that grapes should always be cut up for children up what age I can't remeber but it was over 8. His reasoning behind this was something to do with the skin of a grape and if a child swallowed one whole. He said that once swallowed whole grapes are nearly impossible to get out because the grape skin has no moisture and would stick to the windpipe or something like that. Sorry I know I'm being vague but I can't remember excatly what he said. Anyway apparently if they are cut in half they are far easier to get out if a child does happen to choke. I'm not sure how accurate this infomation is but I know I don't want to find out the hard way that he is right

 

With the children that I look after (which is much easier to supervise in a home environment) really objected to me cutting up their grapes as 'they are not babies' so as a compromise I ask them to bite the grape in half instead of putting a whole one in.

 

Like I said, I'm really not sure how accurate the information is but thought I'd share it anyway. I would love for someone to tell me I'm wrong so I can lose my grape paranoia, it's strange how somethings stay with you isn't it.

[AnonyMouse_705]

Actually Rapunzal, now you mention it, that rings a bell with me too. I think staff members were also told something similar about grapes during a recent first aid course. Will follow up with them.

[Guest]

always cut ours in half, regardless of age of children. Don't want that to happen on my watch ta!

[AnonyMouse_13453]

I wouldn't have had bother with cutting them in half - I can see how they theoretically could choke someone who didn't bite them properly first, it was her insistence on quarters that seemed OTT!