Glendevon Early Learning and Childcare Centre
Marvellous Mealtimes “Do It Yourself Deli”
Hi my name is Tracey Sharples and I am a Senior Early Years Officer at Glendevon ELC Centre (previously Maddiston PS Nursery). In addition to this I am privileged to currently work as a Marvellous Mealtimes Pedagogue one day a week with Ashley Cupples.
I have been in my current role for three years and during this time had the amazing opportunity to work alongside Alison Clark and Donna Green on a Froebel Trust project implementing a slow pedagogy approach within Marvellous Mealtimes in my setting. This project took me and our setting on a transformational journey to create unhurried mealtime spaces that reflected our Marvellous Mealtimes values and principles through the lens of a Slow pedagogy approach.
In August of this year our new Glendevon ELC Centre opened and with 104 children we are currently the second largest Centre in Falkirk Council. Although we had established effective Marvellous Mealtimes routines, we knew these would need to be adapted to suit our very larger, different centre environment.
It was extremely important to me and the team to ensure our Marvellous Mealtimes continued to be a high-quality calm, unhurried experience for all children regardless of if they were the first to eat or the last. Through ongoing reflective practice, input from staff, children, and families our Marvellous Mealtimes vision is coming together. A one-way system is utilised by children where they can independently access crockery/glasses, choose foods from the servery, and dispose of their food waste and dishes.
As an advocate of children’s agency, I am always looking at ways to further foster children’s autonomy and independence within our nursery. I identified an opportunity to do this as it was observed that a lot of children were not eating their full sandwich as they preferred plain bread, no butter or didn’t like the choice of filling leading to waste and hungry children.
To support this a “Do it Yourself Deli” was implemented which consisted of a small table located in the Marvellous Mealtime area. A sandwich visual was created to enhance the communication process for all children to create their own sandwiches and a variety of fillings provided to support this.
The “Do it Yourself Deli” proved to be very popular and children loved being able to just take their time to create their own sandwiches for themselves. Through observation it was identified that children who used the deli enjoyed the feeling of successfully making their own sandwiched and were seen to be more confident in their eating routines. Wastage was noted to have declined and pickier eaters were trying and eating more as they had made something they wanted to eat. The deli has also helped to instil early healthy eating habits for children within our nursery environment and developed many life skills such as decision making, perseverance, problem solving and responsibility to name just a few.
Our “Do it Yourself Deli” has continued to be very popular and further evolved through children having responsible for helping to prepare a variety of mixed salads, homemade dips and creating their own filled wraps. At first only a few children tried or ate the salads but over the last few months there has been an increase in the number children consistently eating a simple salad as an accompaniment to their meal. Offering choice and new foods at the deli table has created wonderful conversation opportunities which include discussing different tastes, healthy eating, and knowledge around a variety of fruit and vegetables. Feedback from children has been positive with many identifying that their self-prepared foods taste better than the adult’s ones.
Below are some photos of our “Do it Yourself Deli” and if you are thinking about setting one up and would like any help or advice, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Tracey
