Nursery and access to water....

[LoveBeingAsleep]

Am I right in being under the impression thatchildren should have access to a drink at all times?

I believe that's true - they are supposed to be able to help themselves to a drink whenever

Yes that is what is supposed to happen. Although I know it doesnt in some nurseries!
All my children have water bottles. With milk at snack time and juice at lunch time.

Yes.

Lots of nurseries aren't very good at implementing it.

Drink bottles mean lots of washing and preparation.

Labelled cups get mixed up so aren't hygienic.

Disposable cups are not very green.

Any ideas?

THe nursery I work in has a water cooler machine, at child level, in our pre school room and plastic cups next to it, the children then go and help themselves. They then have milk as an option with snack and meals.

I use colour coded anyway up cups

So
lilac with lilac lid = child 1
Lilac with pink lid = child 2
Lilac with green lid = child 3
Blue with blue lid =....

& so on

god Kaymac thats complicated!for 2 and 3 year olds

at ds*s nursery the children have coloured cups and are offered some water every half hour in this heat (hourly when not so hot). good compromise I think.

A water drinking fountain is what we have in our nursery, plus the children bring their own drinks bottles and they have milk at break.

Complicated?? Yep

But the children self regulate - "That's not your cup, here have yours"

they are cleverer than us

Boys generally better than girls at remembering everyone's colour - in the morning when filling them up the 2-3yos tell us which cups to get out based on who is due

The nursery that dd is starting at doesn't currently do this. On the two hour previsit I went to last week the only drink they had was with snack and the next one would have been lunch. I know they ARE going to be changing it but should I insist dd keeps her drink with her or not?

I would...

At my nursery this was one of the issues we had, the 3-5 room has a water cooler, i don't i can trust my 2-3 year olds with one, so we have water bottles which have the childrens labels on, (each child has a label at nursery, for their peg, sleep mat, sign in board, and to table place, the labels have a picture and there name on, it follows them through the nursery, to keep up consistancy) so the label on the bottles are just their picture, a smaller version. The 1-2 room have cups with their names attached that the adults hand out to them, and the babies i think are just offered water throughtout the day.

This has been a concern for me at my DD nursery, I turned up early to collect her one day, they were having their afternoon snack/tea and she wanted a drink, they gave her a cup with less than an inch of water in it!! I looked at the other cups and it was the same?

When she comes home she has a whole beaker of liquid as she is thirsty, I'm going to bring it up with them?