General eating habits and patterns are formed in the first few years of life. At The Old Station Nursery Group, our teams play a key role in introducing the children to a wide variety of foods and establishing a pattern of regular meals and healthy snacks.
We work alongside families to understand their child’s eating habits, preferences, dislikes and any allergies or dietary needs. The key person can then share participation in healthy eating activities, new foods the child has tried and the setting’s menu with the parents.
When it is time to eat, we all sit together – just as you might at home. For us, mealtimes aren’t just about nutritious food (although incredibly important) but also about modelling good eating habits and manners too.
Mealtimes are an opportunity to share stories, strengthen bonds, and deepen relationships – to feed your child emotionally and physically. Children learn to express ideas and develop language, vocabulary, communication, and social skills, such as taking turns talking and listening to others.
Good nutrition is the building block of a healthy, happy child, which is why we only serve nutritious meals at our nurseries. Every dish is cooked from scratch, using fresh ingredients and organic vegetables, whenever possible. Our eggs are free-range, and we buy our food from local suppliers. Our Nursery Cooks are trained using the Eatwell NHS guidelines to ensure mealtimes are delicious, packed with good things that enjoyable for children to eat.
We collaborate with nutritionists to ensure our menus have all the right ingredients for strong bodies and alert minds. We can also cater for all dietary requirements and any particular allergies – and we’ll discuss them with you during your child’s settling in visits.
Some of our nurseries have allotments and bedding areas to grow fruit and vegetables. Children at our nurseries enjoy and take pride in the allotment areas they have, fascinated by the process of how things grow, and what their fresh harvest will taste like. Children’s allotment gardening is also a great way to encourage more physical activity at the nursery, improving health and wellbeing, as well as being able to feel connected to nature.
By implementing allotments and bedding areas for our nurseries to access, there is the opportunity for wildlife to grow, helping the local environment thrive.
An allotment is a great way to eat healthily as well as improving physical activity through our regular walks to the area.
By growing our own produce at some of our nurseries, it limits the amount of wasted packaging, emissions from transporting food and possible chemicals.
Visiting an allotment is a fun activity for the children, who are bursting with joy when crops are ready to be harvested. This is also a great way to encourage conversation about sustainability.
Within our nurseries, we aim to use as many seasonal ingredients as we can. Educating children about these foods, and the concept of seasonality, provides many benefits for the development of children, expanding their knowledge on other skills, such as time, weather and the seasons. It is important for children to understand that fruit and vegetables naturally grow, ripen and are best eaten during certain seasons each year.
The taste and nutrition value of these foods are at their highest when they are in season, and it encourages children to think about the process of how non-seasonal food makes its way to our supermarket shelves. This provides opportunity for children to have conversations about advanced technology, modern farming and transport links, further cementing their knowledge of our planet and the environment. Eating seasonally also supports local farmers and suppliers and ensures greater variety in our diets.
Playing and learning outside improves children’s physical and emotional well-being. The open-air learning experience has been shown to be hugely beneficial for children with a range of emotional and developmental needs. All Old Station Nurseries have outdoor space which is used year-round.
Rather than using classroom resources and equipment, children can use natural materials found in the woodland or gardens and enjoy activities such as collecting sticks and leaves, tying knots, making dens, handling tools, using twigs to write in the mud, jumping across stones and much more.
Forest schools offer many benefits and can help children develop an appreciation and understanding of the natural world, promoting outdoor activities and well-being. The multi-sensory experiences in the outdoors stimulate sensory development and the Forest Schools are the perfect environment to gain an early education about ecological systems and sustainable practices.
Our Forest School sessions are run by qualified practitioners, who continuously maintain and develop their professional practice.
A long-term process
Nature-based learning can be a long-term process of regular sessions, rather than one-off or infrequent visits. The cycle of planning, observation, adaptation and review are the cornerstones that link each session.
Taking place in a natural wooded environment
Activities take place in a natural or woodland environment to support the development of a lifelong relationship between the learner and the natural world.
Aims to promote holistic development
Outdoor education aims to promote the holistic development of all involved, fostering resilient, confident, independent and creative learners.
Offering learners the opportunity to take supported risks
Learning within natural surroundings offers learners the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the environment and to themselves.
Our nursery settings work closely with families to support children with allergies, dietary needs and/or intolerances and are treated with diligence.
There is good scientific evidence that being physically active is good for our health. For children and young people, being active has a wide range of benefits.
The introduction of new foods is a gradual process. Our nurseries work closely with families to ensure your child's nutrition needs are met.
My daughter has been coming to hdc Kingsteignton for six months now and it's the highlight of her week, she absolutely loves it. She has made some special relationships with other children and has a good relationship with the lovely staff. They're great at communicating via the app and keeping us up to date with her development with pictures and regular developmental reviews. If we have any worries they always help to ease them! They also provide an excellent variety of healthy food. I would one hundred percent recommend this nursery to anyone.
The nursery provides a variety of enrichment and fun activities for the children. It is great that they also have a qualified teacher who helps plan interesting learning activities. The weekly football, yoga, rugby and dance sessions ensure that there are regular group exercise activities. The staff are all friendly and knowledgeable. They take a keen interest in child development and ensuring the space is welcoming and safe for everyone. The meals provided are varied and nutritious - allowing the children to experience healthy food options and the opportunity to pick how much of each thing they eat. I could not ask for a better nursery for my son.
My son (now two and a half) has been at Sunhill since he was 4-months-old and they have done a terrific job at looking after him. I was so worried initially about leaving him there when he was a baby as he suffered terribly with severe silent reflux and a milk allergy. The staff worked with us as best they could while we got to the route of his health issues and adhered to our guidelines whilst trying to get him into a routine. Fast forward to now, and he is thriving! Despite being on a very restrictive diet (no gluten, dairy, soya or citric acid), he is still provided with a variety of healthy food and doesn't miss out on anything. He's very sociable and happy there and has formed close bonds with some of the careers and his peers. I would definitely recommend Sunhill.