Snacks should be a part of a healthy diet, particularly for active children. Making wise food choices and knowing what to avoid is half the battle. The USDA's Food Pyramid can be extremely useful when you're planning nutritious snacks for childcare centers. Growing, active children need to eat more often, so nutritious snacks are an essential part of their daily meal plan. To stay on the safe side, avoid nuts, seeds, popcorn, grapes, peanut butter and hot dogs when caring for babies and toddlers.
Fruit
According to the National Food Service Management Institute, snacks provide nearly one quarter of a child's daily food intake, so it's vital to make them nutritious. Children need two to three servings of fruit every day. Fruit makes an excellent snack, particularly fiber-rich fruits such as apples, oranges, peaches and pears. For smaller children, slices or cubes are easier to manage. Dried, unsulfured fruit, pineapple chunks, watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew melon are also tasty choices. These fruits are an excellent source of vitamins and minerals.
Vegetables
Children enjoy eating a wide range of tastes, textures, colors, shapes and sizes, and snack food is no exception. Children need three to four servings of vegetables every day. Raw vegetables, such as carrots, celery, cucumber and tomato slices, broccoli and cauliflower, served with an assortment of salad dressing and dips like hummus, are an ideal snack. An assortment of vegetables also exposes children to types of vegetables they may not get at home. For smaller children, try cooked peas, green beans, Lima beans and black-eyed peas.
Dairy
Children need two to three servings of dairy every day, so milk, yogurt and cheese are perfect for snack time. Dairy snacks like cottage cheese, cheese cubes, yogurt, kefir, string cheese and cream cheese on wheat crackers provide much needed calcium for growing bones. Providing toddlers with nutritious snacks gives them a foundation to make wise food choices when they get older.
Bread, Cereal, Rice and Pasta
A growing child needs six to nine servings a day from this category, and this can be difficult. Make the grain category a part of kids' daily meal plans by including these foods in snacks. Foods in this category include bran and blueberry mini muffins, whole grain toast with apple butter, whole grain cereal mixtures, whole-wheat oatmeal cookies with raisins and nuts, rice balls dipped in sesame seeds and pasta salad with chunks of ham.
