Good nutrition is at the heart of great Day Care Daventry shows.

Posted by sylver on July 15th, 2016

Great Day Care Daventry starts with a healthy, balanced and natural lifestyle. At the heart of that healthy lifestyle is good nutrition. Not only does the nursery Daventry promote healthy eating, it even gets the children who attend the school involved in growing, harvesting and preparing the vegetables: both a learning experience, and it doesn’t hurt that they get their hands a little grubby either.

Dolphin Day Nursery Daventry has won awards for the way in which it encourages the children in its care to pursue healthy eating and healthy living. It has been awarded the Heartbeat Award by the Northamptonshire County Council, and it holds the highest (5 star) rating from the Daventry District Council for good hygiene cooking practices. Remember, this is a nursery school.

So what inspires a nursery to aspire to such ratings? Dolphin Day Nursery says on its website that it takes good diet and nutrition very seriously as it helps to promote healthy development of the child in its very important early developmental years. They go on to say that they employ their own qualified cook to plan and prepare meals, built around a four-week cycle in each of summer and winter, with a balanced lifestyle in mind. All the meals are prepared daily on-site: breakfast, snacks, lunch and teas. One of those will be a hot meal.

The Heartbeat Award recognizes caterers who show a commitment to providing healthier food choices in a healthier environment, in response to an increasing incidence of obesity and heart disease plaguing the UK today. That Dolphin Day Nursery has won this award is borne out by the fact that meals are planned to be low in salt and sugar. A high salt diet is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease, while a high sugar diet is a contributor to obesity and diabetes. Getting the children to start healthier eating and leading a healthier lifestyle while young is part of their preparation for later life, for adulthood.

In addition to being healthier eaters, the children also get involved in planting and looking after the vegetables grown on the nursery grounds. They also help to harvest and prepare food to take home to their families, to evangelize about healthy living.

Dolphin Day Nursery Daventry achieved a Gold Heartbeat Award, the higher of only two possible levels of the award. It did so by scoring a 4 under the Food Hygiene Rating System, by complying with the nutritional assessment criteria for nurseries, by having the relevant manager or supervisor trained to a sufficient standard, by showing basic allergy awareness, and – probably most importantly -  by having a Heartbeat Management System in place.

Winning awards don’t make a nursery great or even good, but it does show how serious the nursery takes the building blocks of each child’s development at the school. Paying such careful attention to a detail like nutrition shows their commitment to excellent Day Care. The fact that they weave healthy living and good nutrition into the curriculum and learning experience of children younger than five shows that they understand what balanced childhood development is really all about. 

For parents who want their child to be nurtured in an environment of good nutrition, Day Care Daventry is an ideal option. Day Nursery Daventry helps children to grow healthy, fit and strong.