Little Acorns Day Nursery

We had a flipping great time celebrating Pancake Day at Little Acorns 🥞

In the baby room, our little ones explored pancake-themed sensory trays filled with familiar sights and textures. They enjoyed touching, stacking and pretending to cook pancakes, scooping ingredients, exploring eggs and fruit, and using child-safe utensils and pans. This supported early sensory development, hand-eye coordination and lots of lovely curiosity.

Our preschoolers took things a step further by getting involved in role play and early learning activities linked to Pancake Day. They explored the ingredients needed to make pancakes, practised mark-making and pencil control through pancake-themed activities, and enjoyed imaginative play as they “cooked” pancakes for their friends. There were lots of conversations about counting, turn-taking and healthy foods too.

To finish, the children helped with washing the dishes, scrubbing pans and utensils in soapy water. This was a brilliant opportunity to build independence, responsibility and real-life skills, as well as lots of splashing fun!

A lovely day full of learning, play and pancakes 🥞
















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Kung Hei Fat Choi 🧧✨

We’ve been celebrating Chinese New Year in Little Acorns and welcoming the Year of the Horse 🐴

The children explored Chinese New Year through hands-on, sensory play and creative activities, including:
🏮 decorating lanterns
🧧 finding and counting coins hidden in the sand
✍️ practising mark-making by writing “Happy Chinese New Year”
🎨 creating Chinese-themed stamps and artwork
🥢 exploring textures, tools and traditions through messy play
🥠 exploring red envelopes and sharing fortune cookies, talking about good luck, kindness and positive wishes

These activities supported early mark-making, fine motor skills, number recognition, language development and cultural awareness, while encouraging curiosity and collaboration.

A lovely way to learn about traditions from around the world and celebrate diversity together.

Kung Hei Fat Choi - wishing everyone happiness, health and good fortune in the year ahead!

Valentine’s Day sensory play in full sparkle mode 💕
Ice cubes, glitter and paper hearts invited little hands to explore, scoop and discover. A gorgeous way to support sensory exploration, fine motor skills and early curiosity through play!

Online safety learning in Pre-School.

This week our pre-school children have been learning about online safety using the story “Pop-Up Gremlin”, helping them to understand what to do if something doesn’t feel right when using devices.

We introduced an oversized Pop-Up Gremlin to reinforce key messages about internet safety. The children took part in a fun letter-finding activity, identifying lower- and upper-case letters hidden on the gremlin and covering them with stickers once found. This supported early literacy skills while keeping the focus on staying safe online.

We also explored emotions and feelings linked to using devices. Through creative play, the children made different Pop-Up Gremlin emotions using natural materials, talking about how we might feel if something online makes us happy, worried, confused or unsure.

These activities encouraged:
• conversations about feelings and emotions
• confidence to speak to a trusted adult
• early understanding of online safety
• literacy development through letter recognition
• creative expression using natural resources

A lovely example of learning through play, supporting both emotional wellbeing and digital awareness in an age-appropriate way 💗

Red Room have been busy with our Gruffalo Crumble tuff tray 🌿🐻

Inspired by the much-loved story, children explored dry cereal, oats, pine cones and natural materials, mixing, crushing, rolling and scooping to create their own “crumble.” Just like in the book, hidden Gruffalo characters and woodland animals were discovered along the way - can you spot them all? 👀

This hands-on sensory activity encouraged curiosity, imagination and lots of excited storytelling, while supporting fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and early problem-solving as little hands got to work.

A lovely way to bring stories to life through messy, meaningful play.

Red Room have been busy exploring through hands-on play 🐞🌿

We went on a bug hunt using magnifying glasses, books and hidden insects, encouraging curiosity, observation and early language as children discovered what was hiding beneath the logs and fabrics.

Our construction and sand tuff tray was a big hit, with children scooping, pouring and building using real tools, blocks and spaghetti sticks. Lots of experimenting, problem-solving and fine motor development as little hands got to work.

Can you spot the big spider hiding in the tray? 🕷️👀

No snow? No problem ❄️

Our winter wonderland sensory tray kept little hands busy with scooping, building and imaginative play all morning 🤍

Blue Room have been exploring early maths through glitter messy play.

As part of our topic goals for 2026, the children have been recognising numbers, matching numerals and mark making in a fun, hands-on way.

Activities like this support early number awareness, fine motor skills and concentration...all while getting a little sparkly!

Celebrating Burns Night!

We enjoyed celebrating Burns Night together, with a big thank you to our parents who kindly donated equipment to support the experience. We printed the story and came together for a special group story time with all three rooms, followed by listening to traditional bagpipe music.

It was a lovely opportunity for the children to share stories, music and culture together, and they really enjoyed experiencing something new as a whole nursery.

Thank you to our families for your continued support.










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