Serving breakfast? And Baby Food?

[betsy]

I'm planning to provide the above services. Please advice, and/or give all sorts of input - pros and cons. Thanks.

[playfelt]

Make sure you are clear to the parents what will be available for breakfast and if you do serve at daycare then you probably want to skip morning snack or make it very simple and quick or you will waste a lot of your day eating and what is associated with that. Where kids in other homes will come to care fed and have freeplay from 7-9 you will be having a dab of play, then eating, then cleaning up during that same timeframe. Also if you have any school age kids I would say breakfast is considered extra and not included in the fee ie only included for those paying full day fee so add a $5 charge for school age.

Baby food will depend on how fussy some of your parents are. By the time a child starts care with us they should be on fingerfoods anyways which I provide. I will toss lunch in the magic bullet as needed when they first start. I find this is better than facing the jars of slop parents send anyways and allows me to move them to the regular diet faster since I am in control of how and when.

[Crayola kiddies]

I offer to feed a parent supplied breakfast for any child arriving before 7:30. I don't supply any special foods such as jarred baby food. I want the child on finger foods and transferring the cost over to the parent gives them the nudge to get the child on to my menu and therefore more cost effective for them. I also don't supply homo milk.

[smileyface]

I don't recommend serving breakfast! It's already a lot of work just doing two snacks and a lunch. It's a whole other meal you have to plan, and once you introduce that, parents will be very upset if you ever decide it's not working. I know this, because this situation just happened to me. I was serving breakfast and decided to stop because all I do all day is just prepare meals, serve meals and clean up after meals. I wanted to have more time to play with the kids and do activities instead of spending my whole day in the kitchen. I would recommend to just serve breakfast for morning snack instead of doing both. I've switched to serving breakfast at 9am, and I just ask parents to feed their children a little something first thing in the morning to hold them over until then.

[Sassygirl]

Which is basically "morning snack just earlier" LOL. I open at 7am and all my arrivals are between 6:50-7:30. So, instead of a morning snack I serve a breakfast at 7:30 which is basically a grain of some sort (toast, waffles, dry cereal, breakfast pita) and fruit. We have lunch at 11 so it works out perfectly.
Also, for those on pureed foods still I try and get them off that right away! I will serve the table foods and feed just a tablespoon or two of the pureed.
I also make parents supply the homo milk.

[apples and bananas]

I offer to smush down anything that the big kids eat, but I don't serve baby food. In order to be here you need to be able to pick up food and place it in your mouth. I will serve soft foods for the first little while until I'm confident on what the new ones can eat.

I don't do breakfast either... but I do a snack that's like a mini breakfast at 9am that includes a grain and a fruit or 2.

I would find breakfast hard because I have drop offs between 7:45 and 9:30 some days. And my kids are on the bus before 8 so I'd be feeding them breakfast and then another breakfast and then probably a small snack.

[betsy]

Thank you ladies.

[Momof4]

I serve breakfast at 8:30 then we go outside or start our morning activities at 9am. Really I'm moving the time of morning snack. I serve lunch at 11:30 so I want the meals to be approximately 3 hours apart, then afternoon snack is right after naptime, at about 3pm.

I encourage parents to get their child to feed themself small chunks of food before starting daycare. Even a 10 month old child is capable of learning to do this. Parents have to realize that we have a very busy job taking care of 5 or more children if you have your own children in care as well so we need babies to come into care "daycare-ready". Part of that process is for the parent to have their child on our nap/meal/play schedule and able to eat the foods that are served at mealtime.