How to manage lunch prior to afternoon nursery session

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I wasn't quite sure where to put this, so I hope this topic will be fine.

DS1 is due to start attending afternoon nursery sessions at our local infant school in September. Sessions start at 12.15 and we are lucky to live just 2 minutes walk down the road.

My issue (for wont of a better word) is getting DS1 to eat lunch prior to going out to nursery. He tends to have breakfast at 8.30 ish, but then isn't hungry for lunch until 12.30 -1pm, which is normally around the time we will eat at the weekends and in holidays. He attended afternoon sessions at a local pre-school last school year and most days he would eat very little lunch, which then led to him being bad tempered and crotchety when I collected him (combination of tiredness from pre-school and low blood sugar at a guess). I therefore want to start of on a better tack when he starts nursery in a few weeks to ensure a similar scenario doesn't happen again.

So how do you manage it?

will they not have snack time at the nursery and then he can get some food there? Mid-morning snack?

There may be snacktime, I'm not sure (has been a while since I viewed the nursery).

The pre-school he attended had snacks (fruit) available and the children were encouraged to have something, but it wasn't part of the session for all the DC to still down and have a snack at the same time, iyswim, so some days I know DS didn't have anything as he was too busy playing.

I'm thinking that a mid-morning snack (any suggestion for good snack foods) may be the way to go.

Hi, my son does afternoons at nursery and lunch is a real squeeze to fit in. My son gets up quite early (around 6:30) so I make breakfast at about 7:30 and we have lunch at about 11:30 which means we are ready to leave by about 12:30.

They do snacks about half way through but that only consists of fruit and a biscuit so wouldn't be enough to sustain them I wouldn't think.

That does seem early, is there no provision at the nursery for them all to have some lunch together, maybe at 12.30? Is there any info on the school/nursery website? I would have though most people would struggle to get lunch done before 12.15.

I've had this problem recently, with DS starting an afternoon preschool session at 12.15 pm. DS is not a big eater. He doesn't get up until about 8.30am, so after breakfast he isn't hungry for a big meal until about 1.30pm.

I settled for skipping breakfast and having 'brunch' instead - e.g. spaghetti on toast or sausage sandwiches and fruit about 10.30am or 11 o'clock. That would keep him going until afernoon snack at 2.30ish, and then I'd have his tea ready for about 4 o'clock when he finished.

It kind of worked - but I am still looking forward to DS starting morning sessions instead in September!

DS1 has his nursery session 12.20 til 2.50pm and I gave him his lunch at 11.30am each day. He ate his breakfast at 7ish each morning though, so quite different to your DS.

It is a pain when they do these daft nursery session start times, but not much you can do about it. You just have to alter the lunch time for them. I ended up eating at the same time(!) because it was easier.

There's no way I'd have let DS1 go out to nursery without seeing that he'd eaten properly otherwise I'm sure he'd have been a nightmare for the staff.

Is lunch his "big" meal? We had an afternoon session (12.30) so did lunch at 12ish. They had a snack at nursery. He'll get used to it.

DS1 took at least 30 mins to eat his lunch and so we had to start eating at 11.30. Meant he wasn't rushed before starting his nursery session at 12.20.

Yeah we struggled with this.

Often dd would eat a little bit at 11.30 lunch, & then the rest when she got back from nursery at 15.10.

It is a really tricky schedule I think.