Nutritional Requirements and Menu Planning

All snacks and meals, served at Reaching for Rainbows, have been carefully planned and coordinated in accordance with the Canada Food Guide and meets requirements as set in the Operator Manual for Full-time and Part-time Early Learning and Childcare Centres. Each family will receive a copy of our four-week cyclic menu upon registration. A copy of the menu will also be posted on information bulletin boards throughout the centre, for your convenience.

On occasion, substitutions may be made to the original daily menu plan; however, be assured that the daily recommended servings of each food group will still be met. For young children, not yet eating solid foods, the option will be available to parents to send your own meals or have our cook purée, whenever possible, items from our daily menu.

Parents, whose children require a vegetarian, diabetic or otherwise “special” diet, should notify the director upon registration to allow for arrangements to be made.

Please disregard the following as we do not, currently have any children registered with nut or peanut allergies. Should a child with these allergies be registered you will be notified and notices will be posted at the entrance.

Due to the high, and continually increasing, incidence of nut and peanut allergies, Reaching for Rainbows has adopted a “NUT FREE” policy. We do not prepare or serve any meals or snacks containing nuts or peanuts; nor do we permit these foods at the centre. Please remember that this policy, in particular, may hold “life and death” consequences and abstain from sending foods or products containing nuts or peanuts to the centre with your child.

NATURE FRIENDLY LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

At Reaching for Rainbows, we believe that children benefit from being exposed to and taking responsibility for other living things. This is why you’ll find plants and/or garden beds in our program areas and outdoor play area. You may also find that, with the changing seasons, we have a variety of other living creatures growing or living amongst us, as a part of our learning environment. In the late spring and early summer, you’ll often see chicken and/or goose eggs incubating in one of the program areas. Perhaps you’ll see a “swampy looking” aquarium…if so, look for the frogs’ eggs nestled in the vegetation, or maybe you’ll see the tadpoles have already hatched. If the water level is low and there are rocks and vegetation above the water line, look for tadpoles with legs or full-grown frogs. Also, in late spring and early summer, you may see a netted or glass terrarium with vegetation inside. Depending on the stage of their metamorphosis, you’ll see pupa or larva dangling from the top back of the terrarium. If they’ve already metamorphosed, you’ll be able to observe the adult butterflies for a couple of days before we release them. At any other point in the spring, summer and early autumn, you can expect to find observation stations, throughout the centre, within which the children have “caught” one kind of insect or another. We also, sometimes, have a colony of ants demonstrating their initiative, industriousness and ingenuity on the ant farm.

Menu-Spring-Summer-2023