Snacks and preschool

Along with the ideas of others, I'd take a moment to ask the preschool
how much they are giving them - I've seen it at our preschool, at the
beginning of the year the teachers just give each child the same size
handful, but different personalities, metabolisms and eating habits need
different things, they pretty soon worked out which children to give a
bigger handful to and which children wouldn't eat it all, or which
children would eat it all but didn't really need to, but just ate what
was put in front of them. I never really sore any problems, because when
it was something like that it came out of a big box and there was no
point in arguing he got more than me because more was always available.
If they did have something that was a treat of was limited it was a
clear one each or whatever and they almost always did have some kind of
crackers on hand.

Personally I wouldn't be entirely happy with snack crackers on a daily
basis - it's ok as a back up keep in the cupboard snack, or a late
afternoon snack that not all the children will be there for or even
want, but in places where snack has been provided or each child has
taken it in turns to provide snack it's always been aimed to have it
from two food groups, so usually some kind of cracker, but then fruit,
either fresh or dried, or cheese, sometimes yoghurt, that kind of thing.
When I'm buying I try to avoid highly processed things and go for a
multigrain type thing.

How does the milk consumption compare to her previous schedule, it might
be that that is filling her up, lots of children will down whatever milk
is put in front of them and it could be totally the wrong amount!

You can't change when snack is (unless it is a problem for a good number
of the kids and they need to try a different schedule for some reason),
but that's no reason not to talk to the preschool, our preschool doesn't
do milk (I think it's only a state requirement at lunch time), but it's
obvious that some parents have said no juice and others haven't, so
those kids have water and other kids like to have some of each and other
kids who are allergic to something and have parent provided snacks or
don't have certain things - it's impossible to have everyone always eat
the same thing, gone are the days of putting the kids with special
dietary needs on one table away from everyone else and kids seem to be
very accepting of different diets.

Cheers
Anne