My Little Barn Owls Nursery & Forest School

25/08/2026

🌟 MASSIVE WELL DONE, MEL! 🌟

A huge congratulations to our wonderful cook, Mel, for once again achieving a fantastic 5-STAR FOOD HYGIENE RATING ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ following our annual unannounced food hygiene inspection!

This is such a brilliant achievement and a true reflection of the hard work, care and dedication Mel puts into our kitchen every single day. ❤️

Mel has a huge responsibility, from managing a wide range of allergies and dietary requirements and ensuring every child can eat safely, to preparing menus in line with food safety and nutritional guidance — all while making delicious, nutritious meals that our children love! 🍎🥕🍽️

Maintaining these high standards day in, day out, especially when an inspector can arrive completely unannounced, is something to be incredibly proud of.

Mel, we are so proud of you, as always! Thank you for everything you do for our children and our setting.

5 stars again — absolutely smashed it! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐👏🎉

Well done, Mel! ❤️

12/08/2026

Following the Children’s Interests – Our Shopping Trip

Over the past week, many of the children have been talking about going shopping, particularly following the additions we have made to our home corner and role-play area, including bags, shoes, scarves and other shopping-related resources.

Following this interest, we decided to extend the children’s learning through a real-life shopping experience in our local village. The children were given some money and visited a local charity shop, where they each chose an item to buy. They practised recognising money, paying for their chosen item and receiving change, developing their mathematical understanding in a meaningful, real-life context.

We then visited our local café for a refreshment stop. The children confidently communicated what they would like and were very excited to ask for a full English breakfast! Although our budget unfortunately didn’t stretch to breakfast, the children enjoyed choosing and ordering a drink. This provided valuable opportunities to develop communication and language, confidence, independence and social skills.

Our final stop was to purchase ingredients to make a birthday cake for one of our children who is celebrating their birthday this week. The children helped to identify the ingredients we needed, think about quantities and make choices, creating an exciting opportunity to continue their learning when we return to nursery.

Curriculum Links

* Understanding the World: Exploring our local community, visiting local businesses and understanding how people shop and use money.
* Mathematics: Recognising money, counting, comparing prices, paying and understanding change.
* Communication and Language: Developing confidence when speaking to shop and café staff, making choices, asking questions and expressing their ideas.
* Physical Development: Walking safely around the village, carrying shopping and developing independence when handling money and belongings.
* Expressive Arts and Design: Extending the children’s imaginative play through their real-life shopping experiences and using these experiences within role play back at nursery.
* Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Developing independence, confidence, decision-making and understanding how to behave safely and appropriately within the community.

This experience demonstrates how we have followed the children’s interests and extended their learning beyond the classroom, using real-life experiences to make learning meaningful and purposeful.

07/08/2026

🚗🔄 Learning Through Schemas – The Rotational Schema 🔄🚗

Have you noticed your child becoming fascinated with spinning wheels, turning objects or watching things go round and round? This could be a sign that they are exploring the rotational schema!

A schema is a repeated pattern of behaviour that children use to explore and make sense of the world around them. When children are exploring the rotational schema, they may enjoy:

🔄 Spinning car wheels
🚗 Rolling cars and watching the wheels turn
🌀 Spinning themselves around
🔧 Twisting and turning lids, k***s and objects
⚽ Rolling balls and watching them move
💧 Watching water swirl or spin
🎡 Exploring anything that rotates or moves in circles

💡 Why is this important?

Although it might sometimes look like children are simply ‘playing with wheels’, they are actually developing lots of important skills!

Through this type of play, children are exploring cause and effect, movement, speed, direction, problem-solving and early mathematical concepts. They are learning that “when I do this, something happens!”

They are also developing their physical coordination, concentration, curiosity and communication skills as they explore and talk about what they notice.

🏠 Try it at home!

You could encourage this learning by:

🚗 Providing cars, ramps and different surfaces to explore
🌀 Offering objects that twist, turn and spin
⚽ Rolling balls together and talking about how they move
💧 Exploring water wheels or watching water go down a plughole
🔄 Singing songs with actions involving turning and spinning

Most importantly, follow your child’s interest. If they want to spin, roll and turn, give them opportunities to explore it!

At My Little Barn Owls, we recognise that these repeated patterns of play are an important part of children’s learning and development. By understanding schemas, we can build our curriculum around children’s natural interests and extend their learning through meaningful play. 🌱💛

07/08/2026

15/07/2026

🌸 Our Preschool Children Meet the Roberttown in Bloom Judges! 🌸

On Monday, some of our preschool children had the wonderful opportunity to meet the judges for Roberttown in Bloom. It was a truly special experience, and our children were incredibly proud to showcase their communication skills by signing using both Makaton and British Sign Language (BSL).

At My Little Barn Owls, we are passionate about creating an inclusive environment where every child can communicate, learn and thrive. Supporting children who use Makaton and BSL is an important part of our everyday practice, and it was fantastic to share this with the judges.

The children represented our nursery beautifully and thoroughly enjoyed being part of such a special community event. We are so proud of each and every one of them.

A huge well done to everyone involved in Roberttown in Bloom. Your hard work, dedication and community spirit have made our village look absolutely beautiful. We are incredibly proud to be part of such a wonderful community.

💚 Well done, Roberttown in Bloom, and thank you for all that you do! 🌼

07/07/2026

🍂 Good luck to all of our Little Barn Owls children attending their transition day today! 🍂

Today is a very exciting milestone as many of our children take the next step on their learning journey. We know there may be a mixture of excitement, curiosity and a few nervous butterflies, but we have every confidence that each and every one of you will shine.

Be kind, be brave, ask lots of questions and, most importantly, enjoy your new adventure. We are so incredibly proud of all you have achieved and can’t wait to hear all about your day when you return.

Wishing all of our wonderful children the very best of luck today—you’ve got this! 💛🦉

06/07/2026

*Important Information*

Please see attached information advertising the holiday club for the upcoming Summer holidays. We have received HAF funding to enable us to offer free sessions for eligible children, if your child is eligible for benefit related free school meals then they will be eligible for these free sessions.

We only have 10 funded spaces available and they are available for 4-8 year olds on the days and times as shown on the attached image.
We will share our planning with you for the summer holidays shortly.

If you would like to secure one of the spaces please message Zoe as soon as possible.

Kind regards,

The Out Of School

25/06/2026

The children have had a wonderful day today, keeping cool with lots of water play and enjoying a special surprise delivery from our ice cream man! 🍦💦☀️

There were plenty of smiles, laughter, and happy memories made throughout the day.

Please see some of our favourite photos below!

22/06/2026

Thank you to everybody who came to our someone special Stay and Play today in Eagle Owl and Wise Owl Rooms. It was a great success!

We hope you enjoyed spending time in the setting with your children as much as we enjoyed welcoming you and sharing their learning experiences with you. It was wonderful to see so many families engaging with our invitations to learning and spending quality time together.

Please see below for photos from today’s Stay and Play. 🦉✨📸