A nature-based, food-related activity that young children can enjoy indoors at any time of the year is cress growing. Today we outline how it can be made even more fun and creative for kids by growing the cress as little ‘egg heads’. These come complete with comical faces and amusing hairstyles made of green cress shoots! Children will absolutely love it when they end up with little egg faces with spouting hairstyles that each have real character. And, they’ll even be able to eat the results!
It’s an Educational Activity
This activity is suitable, under adult supervision, even for the very young. Toddlers and under-fives will learn along the way too. They’ll learn lessons about nature, how seeds grow into plants and how some plants can be turned into tasty food — all with very little effort. It will also teach children about being responsible for another living thing.
Cress is Easy to Grow, & Tasty!
The good news is that cress is one of the easiest micro vegetables to grow. It can be grown more or less anywhere and with little maintenance. Historically cress was used in herbal medicine, but nowadays is used in meals for its distinctive flavour. Probably the most common use of cress is in egg and cress sandwiches. However, it’s also great in salads and makes an excellent garnish. Cress soup and cress pesto is delicious and very flavoursome!
Cress is Incredibly Nutritious!
Cress is also very nutritious. It contains potassium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K and more. All these vitamins mean that cress has excellent health benefits and this beneficial micro vegetable can be easily fitted into children’s diets. Making it part of a fun activity will make it more likely that children will then eat it. There are no downsides to this excellent children’s activity!
Growing Cress for Small Kids and Big Kids
Cress seeds can be bought inexpensively in most garden centres and often in supermarkets. Generally, they are very cheap to buy too. You do not need to use the whole packet in one go either, so children can use only as much as they need for the activity and keep the rest in the packet for another time.
Children can grow the cress in any container they like. For this activity today, we chose to grow our cress in empty egg shell cases to create little ‘cress people’.
How to Grow Cress ‘Egg Heads’
- First, the parent should boil some eggs. Maybe do this when egg is on the menu for that day, so the cooked egg won’t be wasted.
- Then, once cooled, the tops of the eggs need to be carefully broken off. Carefully scoop out all the egg, taking care not to cause cracks anywhere, until you are left with an empty shell. Parents may need to help little children with this part.
Next, find a vessel to prop the egg shells up in. This could simply be an egg cup or even an egg carton, like that shown in the photo. Then, decide what to fill the empty egg shells with. Children can choose either damp kitchen roll or damp compost/soil to grow the cress seeds on. Carefully fill the empty egg shells almost to the top with the chosen filler. (We tried both and each grew well. Interestingly, the cress seeds grown on kitchen roll tissue paper grew a little faster and therefore taller than those grown on compost. They therefore looked a bit more ‘wild’ — it was quite a surprise and had an amusing impact on the egg-people’s hairstyles).
Make sure you or your child add some funny faces on the shells — maybe even give them names. The faces can be drawn simply using a marker pen (Sharpies are ideal) or you can get even more creative using coloured paints. Children may find drawing the faces easier if they are shown some visual reference and perhaps they can practise first on paper. If too young to draw suitable faces, a parent or creative older sibling may be able to help.- Next, your child can sprinkle some seeds onto either the damp kitchen roll or damp earth (whichever has been used to fill the egg shells).
- Place onto the windowsill and ensure that your little one gives them a small amount of water each day to stop them drying out.
Within a week or so, the little egg heads should begin to sprout green ‘hair’ shoots!- A few days later, you should have some funny faces with lots of sprouting hair, ready to be cut for use in sandwiches, salads, garnishes or soups. And, if you have cut the ‘hair’ rather than pulling it out by the roots, it should re-grow and give you a second head of green hair and thereby an additional crop of tasty cress to eat! We chose to make an egg and cress sandwich but you can choose your own use of the cress.
All in all, it’s a fun, educational, creative and nutritious activity that children will really love! It’s also a great opportunity for parents or adult carers to interact with little ones and to guide them and teach them insights and lessons along the way. Such interaction is priceless for under-fives.
Outstanding Childcare for Your Child at Little Cedars Nursery, Streatham
Give your baby, toddler or preschooler the very best start in life at Little Cedars Nursery, Streatham
Little Cedars is an excellent nursery and pre-school in Streatham that provides babies, toddlers and under-5s with outstanding childcare and a first class early years education. The nursery is near Streatham Hill, Streatham Park, Streatham Common and Furzedown and also close to Tooting, Tooting Bec, Tooting Broadway, Tooting Common, Balham, Norbury and Colliers Wood. We’d love to show you and your little one around, so why not come for a free guided tour where you’ll be able to ask any questions and see how well your child fits in. Please select a button below to get in contact, arrange a tour or to apply for a place.
It can be frustrating when children refuse to eat particular foods, often seemingly for no apparent reason. Much of it is new to them, though, if they’ve only recently been weaned off milk. So, firstly don’t get stressed about it. Refusing certain foods initially is quite normal for the very young. Often, all that is needed is a strategy for dealing with finicky eating and a little patience. Let’s take a look, today, at measures parents or carers can take to manage children who are fussy eaters. After all, it’s imperative that they have a healthy, balanced diet.
Similarly, some foods are an acquired taste, i.e. one that’s initially not liked, but is later appreciated and enjoyed. Avocados have a taste that’s quite subtle and delicate, for example. Because of that, some youngsters think they are bland — but may well love their subtle flavour and texture once they’re older. That’s an acquired taste. So, again, it’s worth encouraging your child to keep trying foods even if they don’t think they like them in the beginning.
If your child loves one food but not initially another, try using food bridges. This is when you pair one food with another food that you know they already like. You can start small and gradually increase the amount of the ‘new’ food. Adding cheese to potato or pasta is one example. Adding a small garnish of finely chopped herbs, vegetables or even fruit to pasta, rice, pulses or meat is another. These may slip under the child’s radar and this will help with gradual acceptance.
You could even make the food into fun pictures, all entirely made of the food you want them to eat. For example, peas could be made to represent a hill, broccoli could represent a wooded area, the yolk of a fried egg could represent the sun and so on. This approach will help children to see a fun aspect of food, and to engage more directly with it.
You could even get children involved in the creativity and choices around food. With the requisite care around safety, you could involve them in food preparation, choosing foods, deciding how they are displayed on the plate and so on. This will again get them more engaged around food and make it into a fun, creative activity. Children will love that. Remember, though, that this should only be taken so far. After all, you do not want to encourage them to always ‘play’ with their food.
When your child eats something that they’ve not been keen on eating before, give them positive feedback as this will encourage them. A well done here and a good job there will sometimes do wonders.
At Little Cedars Nursery in Streatham we know how finicky young children can sometimes be. So, we too occasionally employ some of the tactics described above. After all, food and a healthy, balanced diet is important and never more so than in children’s formative years. Study after study has shown this to be the case. Read our 
In our last post, we asked 
For those on dairy-based formula milk, it’s pretty much plain sailing too. Because vegetarians — as opposed to vegans — are OK eating dairy-based food, formula milk is generally fine for them. The most popular types are based on cows’ milk, although several other animal milks are also available. So long as dairy-based formula milk is high quality, given in the right quantities, consumed at the right intervals and is age appropriate for the child, it contains all the nutrients and vitamins needed. That’s without the need to give additional supplements too.
Fruit and vegetables are really a given because they pack so much goodness, including many vitamins, minerals like potassium and also fibre. Fresh vegetables and fruit are ideal but, failing that, frozen, tinned and even dried varieties are also OK.
Tofu, also known as bean curd, which is made from soy.
any pulses, seeds or grains should be sprouted, cooked or soaked before consumption (as appropriate);
Let’s first take a look at the benefits of vegetarianism …
is linked to a reduction in symptoms for those with asthma;
Scientific studies conclude that switching to a vegetarian diet will help the planet enormously. That’s because significantly less greenhouse gas is produced in growing crops compared to raising livestock. What’s more, scientists believe that the necessary reduction in green house gas emissions will be achieved far more swiftly through a widespread switch to vegetarianism than through what’s currently just a gradual shift away from the burning of fossil fuels. Growing crops rather than animals also causes far less pollution in waterways and oceans and also uses significantly less water. The benefits of vegetarianism to the planet are simply enormous.
Is a Vegetarian or Vegan Diet Safe for Children?
Back in April last year, we wrote an article about 
Microgreens are great fun and extremely easy for children to grow. Once ready, they can be used rather like salads and garnishes. They are very tasty and are extremely nutritious.
Microgreens are traditionally grown in shallow seed trays, which are inexpensive to buy. However, at home, they can just as easily be grown in flower pots, used yoghurt pots, empty egg cartons, the trays from ready-meals or even cut-down cardboard cores from kitchen rolls. So long as water is allowed to drain from them and they can support at least a shallow depth of compost, these can all be suitable. Plastic cartons will need a few holes punched in the bottom to allow for drainage, so parents might need to organise that in order to avoid their children hurting themselves. Other than that, it’s plain sailing for supervised children to do themselves.
Suitable seeds include: rocket, a type of strongly-flavoured lettuce; beetroot, with their lovely red stems and mild, earthy taste; spinach, which also has a mild flavour and is full of goodness; red cabbage, which is also rich in a variety of vitamins and minerals; fennel, which will have a distinctive aniseed flavour; broccoli, which will grow into sprouts that have a slightly spicy taste; radish seeds, which also grow into leaves that taste a little fiery; and also mustard seeds (for children who are OK with even more hot, spicy flavours).
First, your child should fill the seed trays, flower pots or equivalent, almost to the top, with some compost.
As as shoots begin to appear (usually after just a few days), remove any covering if used and continue to ensure that the compost is always kept moist, but not over-watered.
Once harvested, they should be rinsed to get rid of any stray compost. They are delicious to eat and, depending on the seeds grown, have a huge variety of tastes and colours. Children and parents alike can benefit from the nutritious and tasty shoots as part of a variety of meal types. Full of vitamins and minerals, they can be used in salads, as pizza toppings, garnishes, toppings for risottos, soups and pastas, as fillings in sandwiches, sprinkled on top of baked potatoes or into burgers and much more. They’re very adaptable and, with their distinctive tastes and textures, will make any meal really special.
Babies benefit enormously from breast milk; from simple, practical considerations to major health benefits, many of which continue to benefit them into adulthood. Let’s take a look:
Breastfeeding also has a range of significant health (and other) benefits for mothers. These include:
The childcare professionals at Little Cedars Nursery are keen to fall in with the wishes of parents when it comes to baby and infant milk. To that end, parents are free to supply 
Also known as complementary feeding, weaning is an important milestone for any parent or baby and usually occurs when the baby reaches the age of about 6 months. Sometimes babies simply tire of milk and weaning thereby comes naturally. In other cases, a baby needs a bit more encouragement to make their transition towards solids. Here, we’ll explore the whole topic of weaning in more detail, including ways parents can help to make the transition smoothly and stress-free for all parties.
Weaning should be fun and it’s also the only time in a child’s life where they won’t have any preconceived ideas about what foods they “do or don’t like”. So, parents can experiment, within reason of course. It’s a time when introducing new foods to the baby comes naturally once the baby has caught on to the idea of this new experience.
Don’t rush it; set aside some time with baby so it’s relaxed, otherwise everyone can get stressed, especially initially.
You can later move on to whole, (adult) finger-sized pieces of very soft fruits that baby can learn to hold. However, do read the Health & Safety Considerations section below before moving to un-mashed foods.
Huge care needs to be taken to avoid giving infants anything that’s going to represent a potential choking hazard. Whole grapes, cherry tomatoes or anything else of a similar size would be examples of this as they are perfectly sized to block a baby’s airway if not first chopped up. Also avoid anything hard like nuts, raw vegetables or un-mashed apple and ensure that any pips/seeds/stones are removed from fruit and bones are removed from fish or meat.
Always try to maintain a varied diet for the infant, so they get all the vitamins and nutrients they need as they intake less and less milk. Ensure the foods contain sufficient iron, which can be sought from fortified cereal, fish, milk, dark green vegetables, lentils and beans. Giving them finger foods to hold and eat themselves is a great way to encourage them to feed themselves (under supervision, of course). As they grow older they can be encouraged to eat at the family table with parents/siblings and eventually upskill to using cutlery, along with eventually learning the rules around good table manners etc.
It’s important to get children used to visiting the dentist and for this to be a positive experience. Dentists can highlight any potential problems early on and regular visits will also ensure that children realise the importance of teeth cleaning and oral hygiene as they grow. Starting early is also more like to avoid the possibility of them being nervous about visiting the dentist (if you are nervous yourself, try not to let this show as it could project the fear onto your child). NHS dental treatment is free for UK children. 
Sugar and tooth decay go hand-in-hand, especially if too much sugar is in the diet and/or if toothbrushing isn’t regular and thorough. The amount of potential decay is also made worse the longer sugar stays on the teeth. Cutting down on sugar intake will help limit the problem, as will a good tooth brushing regime. Here’s what parents and carers of babies and young children can do:
Getting the approach right means healthier teeth and gums, fresher breath, better looking teeth, more self-confidence and potentially better health overall as the child grows up. Setting good teeth cleaning and tooth hygiene habits early on means children are more likely to continue the good work as they grow into adulthood. This includes regular, fear-free visits to the dentist for check-ups.
Are you pregnant, or a parent with a child under four? If so, your family may be eligible for free healthy food, milk and vitamin supplements. In England, some of these free items are available under the ‘Healthy Start’ scheme, which we’ll explain in this quick-start guide.
Eligible individuals can get the following, absolutely free:
The infant formula milk:
These free vitamin supplements are important for pregnant women, breastfeeding mums, babies and young children because many are deficient in them at this stage in their lives.
In order to be eligible for Healthy Start vouchers, you need:
Following on from our post last month about 
Last month we published 
However, regular exercise has many other potential benefits aside from the management of physical weight and body mass. These include:
The Government launched its ten year ‘Plan for Action’ to fight childhood obesity back in 2017 and has continued to expand the scheme since then. This initiative was timely in light of the strain that obesity puts on the NHS, made only worse by the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. As well as raising awareness of the issues surrounding childhood obesity, measures include things like the so-called ‘sugar tax’, where soft drinks are subject to a levy in order to persuade manufacturers to move towards healthier, reduced-sugar alternatives (a 20% reduction in sugar is a key aim). A similar campaign is being applied to sugar in foods, particularly those that appeal to children. For example, biscuits, confectionery, breakfast cereal, cakes, ice cream and suchlike. The aim is to eventually set caps on the amount of sugar and/or calories per 100g of product. Public Health England (‘PHE’) will monitor manufacturers’ responses to their campaigns and will apply additional “incentives” to improve should they be found wanting as time progresses.
At Little Cedars Nursery in Streatham, we take physical development of children very seriously, so physical education is something that all children have available to them. All children are encouraged to be active, and interactive, so as to remain fit and to be able to hone their physical and motor skills. Indeed, this is a core element of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework that forms the basis of our curriculum.