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  • Home
    • All About Us
  • Fees and Entitlements
  • Contact Us
  • Policies
  • Forest Schools
  • 2 Year Check
  • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
  • NHS Heath Advice
  • Little Acorns at Home
  • Newsletters
  • Little Acorns Culture and Community
  • Acorns Linens and Knits Shop

Who's in the team?

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Mel and Annie are a mother and daughter team, who between them have a huge amount of experience in education. They have trained as childminders together and have built a setting that reflects their passion for enabling environments, nurturing learning independence, active learning and curiosity.   We are all DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) enhanced checked with updates. 

​We are trained together in Early Literacy,  PSED - Managing Feelings and Behaviour, Promoting and Supporting Handwashing in the setting, Adult-Initiated learning, In Partnership Children and their families, Cognitive Load Theory, More than just numbers, Loose Parts play. 
Mel is a trained primary school teacher B.Ed with 30 years teaching experience. She was a deputy head teacher for 10 years, and for 15 years her role included being a Special Educational Needs Co-Ordinator, working with children, their families and teachers to help find and provide the support that they needed. She has a passion for Early Years and Foundation Stage education, teaching predominantly in Key Stage 1 during her career, reception class and year 2 particularly. On leaving teaching she worked for Surrey, teaching children who were out of school or difficult to place  and those awaiting special school placements, providing additional support for their families. She has also supported young and new parents to settle their new-borns on return home. She is committed to creative learning, discovery, schematic play opportunities, exploring, learning in the outdoors, learning through play, first hand experiences, mantle of the expert, imaginative and creative curriculum provision, quality story telling and real reading.  Through the exploration of  schematic play to engage children's interest, she is committed to providing and extending opportunities to develop children's speaking, listening, imagination and thinking skills. 
Annie is a trained Learning Support Assistant.  She has worked in primary school for 7 years supporting learning and play in reception class, year 1 and year 2.  She is trained in positive play, positive behaviour management, speech sounds, supporting learning in the primary school and Lego therapy. She has taken part in outreach opportunities to a special school developing the use of visual timetables, and has supported early reading and phonics play too.  

ABOUT THE SETTING

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Children learn best when they are immersed in real experiences and have time to rehearse, explore, discover and try out their own and new ideas.  When they initiate their own ideas and pursue their interests and schematic play, they become  'lost in their learning',  developing perseverance and curiosity. They learn best when the environment they are in provides them with the materials, space and security they need to make their own decisions and learn and work at their own speed., an enabling environment. They need to feel valued and have their attempts and efforts valued too.  They need to feel celebrated and know that their unique qualities will be recognised and acknowledged.  At Little Acorns we know that we are all different, but that we all belong together.  We understand the important values that help us to learn and play together as friends, respect, responsibility, courage, honesty, joy, tolerance, kindness and forgiveness.  
Our setting comprises of two indoor learning areas, with one becoming a quiet space for children to sleep. Outdoors we have a large patio area, a lawn garden, a wild area and an oak woodland. We have sink ponds and barrel ponds, shrubs, hideaways, restful spaces, a log circle, areas for large and loud play, spaces to sit and just 'be' as well as seated swings, tables, seats and benches. We have sand trays, water trays, construction, a mud kitchen, a mud counter and den. Not to mention oxygen, space and permission to play!
Let's Go Wild!
Our children are encouraged to challenge themselves, to assess for risks and to build a sense of danger.  They have the opportunity to climb and clamber, to explore, build, make and construct. Experimenting with tubes and tubing, boxes, lenses, binoculars, carts and wheelbarrows.  Our forest provides branches, logs, leaf piles, soil and moss! Everything that an intrepid explorer might need when building a hidden den or insect home, mobile or sculpture. Or when baking some delicious mud pies!  
When our forest school practitioner is in the setting the activities will focus on woodland craft and skills.  
Learning through play...
​We provide exciting play based childcare for under fives in our own home. Our 'secret woodland' provides the opportunity to explore learning about and in the outdoors throughout the year, in all weathers.
These wonderful, memorable experiences are nurtured in our setting through play and active learning, developing exploration, discovery, imagination and   creativity.


The wilderness is within their grasp through the woodlands at the bottom of the garden!