Lunchtime is ithe invaluable, yet often wasted opportunity for promoting children's social development, for edveloping self-reliance and for reinforcing learning about health and nutrition.
All to often, practitioners find themselves in conflict with catering services, who prefer children to eat from 'airline' plates (also used in prisons!) as they make washing-up easier.
Good practise may be easier to achieve in smaller settings, yet all setting strive to maximise the social learning potential of lunchtimes.
From a child's point of view, lunchtime can intially be daunting.
Having made the big step from home to an early years setting, staying for lunch is generally the next big hurdle.
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