Week commencing 2nd February 2026 - Acorns - 59 Denmans Lane.

Hello and welcome to our blog post.

We hope you enjoy reading about our week.

Our theme has been ‘Community Roles’ and we have explored occupations within our community – the children spoke about Postal workers, Dentists, GPs, Road workers, Refuse Collectors.

We found that with the theme being very similar to last week (Emergency Services) that the children were still focused on Fire Fighters and Police Officers so we adapted our plans to follow their interests.

Our planning is very flexible and we are always ready to adapt and change to suit the children’s own thoughts and interests.  

We all enjoyed magnets this week and the children made some wonderful models and creations.

We have been working together as a team to create huge models that stretch all the way around the room. The children have been sharing, negotiating and making plans together which has been lovely to observe.   Brilliant team work !

We enjoyed time in the garden dodging the rain. It really has been a long few weeks with heavy rain almost every day.

We have an action plan in place to re-enable our garden space after the long winter and have been talking to the children about the jobs we need to do to get the garden ready for the spring.

The children helped to hang some new labels in the garden and we have started to wash down some of our toys and equipment.

Our planting spaces need to be cleared and the soil prepared for new projects when the sunshine arrives.

We have already planned what we would like to grow this year.

Each week we hope to tick something off of our to do list.

It is very much a joint effort between the children and the teachers and we are excited to see what other ideas the children can come up with to make our garden beautiful again.

“My garden is all muddy at home”

“We need to clean the jumping toys.”

“We could get a scrubbing brush or a jet washer, I have a jet washer but it’s a bit splashy.”

“We need to get some more flowers as these are dead now.”

We have a dad coming in over the weekend to help Mrs Irwin to prune her apple tree. We wonder how many apples will grow this year.

We have helped out in the kitchen this week – We made a sausage plait for lunch one day, helped to chop fruit and spread our own toast.

We also made some fresh playdough.

If you would like our playdough recipe, just ask - we will be happy to share it.

Do the children help in the kitchen at home? We would love to hear about the jobs they enjoy.

Felix (The Nursery Bear) has been on adventure this week and we look forward to him coming back to find out what he has been doing.

Each week we will send Felix home with a different child to share fun and adventures.

Here are a selection of photos from our week.

Mrs Franks attended a network meeting with West Sussex for Designated Safeguarding Leads on Wednesday evening.

We were talking about ways in which we can promote having an open safeguarding culture within the nursery and in partnership with our parents.

Safeguarding the children is our highest priority and we must all work together.

We have an open door policy here and can offer a safe space to discuss any concerns or thoughts.

Mrs Franks and Mrs Irwin are the Designated Safeguarding Leads for The Acorns.

Feb 10^th is Safer Internet day – We will be sharing some useful links on Whatsapp.

Next week we will be celebrating the Lunar New Year – We have lots of exciting activities planned for the children.

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Thank you for taking the time to read about our week and we look forward to your comments.

Mrs Franks and The Acorns Team.