Celebration Foods
There are lots of opportunities for celebrations in Early Years Settings such as birthdays, festivals, religious celebrations, world food days and graduations.
Food is a big part of the way we celebrate. It’s important that while your celebrations need to be fun and memorable they need to follow your Startwell ethos. This means having a balance of food available that represents the Startwell menu guidelines and includes opportunities for physical activity within your celebrations.
Celebration or Party Food
Remember to think about the type of food you serve the children during celebrations. Make sure there is a balance of food served. Your food should still include opportunities to include Fay 5 a day and think about Micky me size and serving suitable portion sizes.
Food Presentation
Remember healthy celebration food doesn’t need to be boring. There are lots of ways that you can present food in fun and exciting ways. Have a look at the Startwell Pinterest board ‘celebration food’ for lots of ideas.
Birthdays
Birthdays are often times when unhealthy foods are eaten and birthday cake is a fundamental part of birthday celebrations. The likelyhood is however, that the children are having birthday cake at home and in large nursery groups/classes birthdays occur frequently.
Startwell recommends that you don’t celebrate birthdays with birthday cake in setting. Parents bringing cake into settings to celebrate birthdays is also an allergy risk. There are lots of ways that children can be made to feel special on their birthday without birthday cake. Of course ‘happy birthday’ can still be sung, wooden birthday cakes can be used, birthday cake hats, birthday superhero capes, watermelon fruit cakes, pick a party game from the birthday cake. The ideas are endless.
It is also important that this is explained to parents. If parents want to bring gifts in for other children, non-food related should be encouraged such as stickers or a small note pad.
Gifts
If you are giving gifts to the children as part of a celebration these should be non-food related. There are lots of non-food related items that children would love like stickers or story books.
Party games
180 Katie and Active Azra love to move fast, and a party or celebration is a great excuse to do this. No party is complete without some party games e.g. musical statues, bottom shuffle race and catching bubbles. Lots of classic party games involve high intensity movement so make sure you get the music playing and get moving.
Partners
Facebook Posts
This is the sixth and final week of our 6 week Startwell summer holiday challenge. Enjoy running and rolling with Sammy Skills and have a go at making lunch with Fay 5 a day. We hope that you have enjoyed all of the activities over the last 6 weeks and have had a great summer. startwellbirmingham.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/6-Week-Summer-Challenge-Poster.pdf
Thanks to those who came along to our Startwell Characters and Messages Training on the 19th August. Take a look at some of the feedback from this training!![]()
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Our training is free and available to early years practitioners within Birmingham. To see what training we have available: startwellbirmingham.co.uk/training-dates/