School Meals And Packed Lunches

From September 2024 our school lunches will be provided by The Kids Lunch Company, a local independent business with 21 years of experience in providing healthy lunches to local primary schools. Currently the lunches offered include a variety of sandwich/roll fillings for parents to choose from, as well as a variety of yoghurts, cheese, fruit, savoury snacks and cakes/treats on Fridays which will be selected by the children on the day. Children with specific food allergies/intolerances are catered for individually with clearly labelled sandwiches delivered on a daily basis.

Reception and Key Stage 1 (Universal Free School Meals)

All Reception and Key Stage 1 children are entitled to Universal Free School Meals.

If parents wish to take advantage of free school meals they need to be pre-ordered. Parents are sent a form from the school office to select the sandwich filling choices for their children and to indicate any specific food allergies/intolerances and/or any other dietary requirements.

Little Chestnuts

Little Chestnuts children who stay for the whole day may choose to have packed lunches or school meals. Preschool children are not entitled to Universal Free School Meals, but parents may order and pay for them.

Parents of Little Chestnuts children are able to order and pay for their child’s lunches via The Kids Lunch Company website: www.kidslunch.co.uk from the 1st August. The order forms are updated each half term and orders can be placed weekly or for the whole half term. Cut-off for orders is at midday on Fridays for all lunches the following week. This is so that lists and labels can be collated for the following week and to manage food supplies as efficiently as possible to minimise waste.

Packed Lunches

If your child is bringing in a packed lunch the following tips may be useful:

Lunchboxes need to be clearly labelled.
All children should bring a full, named water bottle to school every day. This will be taken to lunch with them. We will refill it if required.
Food should be easy to unwrap and eat (e.g. peeled oranges).
Please provide a small plastic plate or paper napkin on which to place food.
We will send uneaten food home in the lunch box so that parents know how much has been consumed and can adjust the amount if necessary.
In our experience, flasks with hot soup are not suitable for this age group.
Nuts, or any food contain nuts, are not allowed at Chestnut Lane School as we have several children who are highly allergic to nuts.
To promote healthy eating and nutrition sweets and chocolate bars are not allowed.
Small round fruits like grapes, cherries, strawberries and cherry tomatoes are recognised by the Foods Standards Agency as potential choking hazards for young children. Therefore please cut them in half lengthways if you are including them in packed lunches. For further information on Early Years choking hazards can be found here: Early-Years-Choking-Hazards