Acorns Nurseries Head Office 3-7 Park Grove, Cathays, Cardiff, CF10 3BJ
02920 382 009 / 02920 394 334
The pedagogy at Acorns is very much based around love, laughter and learning for our children. The children are at the heart of our curriculum and we encourage learning through care and play.
Our new Early Years at Acorns curriculum has been reviewed in line with current statutory guidance, as we strive to prepare our young children for the more formal environment of school.
We will encourage the children to be physically and mentally active, promoting healthy eating, independence in self-care routines and personal hygiene.
We will build on a sense of belonging, promote resilience and allow children to explore and understand emotions, providing high quality care and comfort. One of the most important values at Acorns is to provide the children with the opportunity to build their identity, sense of self belonging and self-confidence.
Children will always be at the centre of what we do at Acorns. The curriculum will encourage belonging, communication, exploring, physical development and well-being and the UNCRC.
Our key carer system will build on relationships, attachments and provide a strong partnership with parents. We endeavour to forge links within the community around the nurseries.
At Acorns, we recognise play is essential for children’s development and provide a balance of child-initiated play and adult-led opportunities. We will provide quality interactions, enabling environments, language rich environments with authentic and purposeful learning, planning and assessment.
We provide safe and secure environments and follow our safer recruitment procedures, promoting British values.
We encourage our children at Acorns to:
Observe – look closely, notice, identify similarities, differences and changes.
Classify – Sort, order and develop reasoning skills.
Predict – Open-ended conversations to guess, such as “What might happen in a cocoon?” enabling thinking without requiring right and wrong answers.
Experiment– Encourage a ‘what if?’ approach, e.g. “What if we didn’t give the bean any water?”.
Measure -measure outcomes and use maths in everyday contexts such as recording the number of days for the eggs to hatch into caterpillars.
Joanne – Acorns Nursery Manager
Outdoor learning at Acorns improves child development, supports mental health, wellbeing, deepens the connection with nature and promotes more inclusive and engaging learning.
We are lucky to have spacious gardens at all our nurseries and our outdoor classrooms allow learning to continue whatever the weather.
We have followed the forest school approach at Acorns for many years.
Our experienced staff are qualified to deliver the principles as set by the Forest School Association.
Many nurseries and schools play outside, however our children take part in meaningful forest school sessions which requires so much more than opening the doors and being outside.
