Finger foods and daycare

[wendibird22]

For those of you who send/sent your DCs to daycare, how did you handle the transition to finger foods? With DD1 she really picked up steam with finger foods from 10-12mos of age and she was home with me on my 2mo summer vacation. So, when she went back to the sitter, the sitter could pretty much offer her whatever the other kids were eating. With DD2 we now use a daycare center and she's in the infant room. The center provides lunch and snack for preschool age and up. Parents supply food for infants/babies. At home it's just easy to give her a piece of whatever we are eating. Not sure how to approach packing finger foods each day (since it's so easy right now to send a weeks worth of jarred food on Monday and not worry about it the rest of the week).

What do you all do? Or have you done?

[BabbyO]

My DS is not at a center, but he is with a sitter. I have to pack his food because he has allergies...so it makes it easier for the sitter.

Anyway, I just send small tupperware containers of food (steamed veggies, pasta, meat, fruit) for the whole week on Monday (assuming DS doesn't finish them earlier). Since DH and I both work full time, we tend to make at least 1 - 2 dinners for the week on Sunday. I just pack whatever we would normally eat and let the sitter decide what to give him. I also have a few "emergency standbys" that travel well and are relatively mess free. Usually crackers, dry cereal, and special allergen-free snack bars.

When we started out, I just gave the sitter very simple things that I knew DS liked and asked her to offer 1-2 times a day. Then we moved on from there. He pretty much eats only solid food at her house now, unless he needs some comforting in the afternoon, then he gets a 4 oz bottle of milk. It was a pretty seamless transition...though I must admit I'm blessed with an AWESOME sitter.

HTH

[catsnkid]

DS has been eating veggies (the microwave in bag kind) and turkey meatballs or chicken at daycare. He also gets a banana and blueberries. This seems to work best for us. I send it in everyday along with a 5 oz milk for lunch. They provide breakfast w/ milk and snack, and ask that you bring extra snacks like puffs or cereal for in a pinch.

[wendibird22]

Maybe what I'll do is keep having them do purees and puffs/O's for the next few weeks and make more of an effort to intro finger foods at dinner. Once she seems to get a better hang of it, then I can send in finger foods to DCP. I'm just worried that if I send that and she either doesn't like them or doesn't make it too her mouth with them that she'll starve and I'll waste so much time in the morning trying to organize what to send in all for naught.

[BayGirl2]

We had DS in daycare all through the food stages. When he was moving from purees to finger food we started sending one meal or snack per day with chunkier food. Fruit, crackers, cheerios, shredded cheese, dehydrated fruit, stuff like that. We always introduced new foods at home, so we knew he'd be familiar with them. The teachers were very willing to work with him in learning to eat and told us if we should bring more or less of something. That said, sometimes he'd like a food at home and not eat it at school, and for no explainable reason. We prepared and sent food daily, because we tend to send fresh things and would make his bottles anyway. I think he would have been bored with just purees at school when he was eating bigger foods at home.

Now that he's in the toddler room where they serve meals, but we still send some extra snacks and milk. (We prefer for him to have organic milk and there are some less healthy foods we've asked them not to serve him. For example tomorrow is fish sticks and tater tots day, so he will be bringing lunch.)