When a family chooses one of our Acorn settings for their baby, it is important to us that they begin their journey in the best possible way. This is why we value the importance of home visits. Home visits provide a great opportunity for parents and children to meet their assigned key person and nursery manager before the enrolment start date. This enables practitioners to speak with and get to know children and their families where they feel most comfortable, confident and relaxed.

Once the initial relationship is formed in the comfort of the family home, the relationship between the practitioner and family continue to build through settling-in sessions at the nursery. Acorn do not set a prescribed number of settling-in sessions as we personalise our approach to meet families’ individual needs. Each family will arrive having had different early experiences and we acknowledge and cater for the fact that the transition period may take longer for some than others. Key persons create a family book, with photos of important people and experiences at home which help support the transition into nursery for babies when shared with their key person.

During the transitional period from home to nursery, our practitioners will complete an ‘All About Me’ document in partnership with families which provides an insight into the child’s life outside of nursery. This information provides us with a good starting point for our staff to build secure attachments with children and know how best to support their learning and care needs, whilst paving the way for a strong partnership and relationship with parents and carers. A buddy key person will also be assigned to each child, who in the absence of the main key person will oversee the care, learning and development of a child and build a rapport with families.

Following this process, staff know their babies well and facilitate an environment that excites babies to want to explore the world and encourages them to develop at their own pace while being sensitively supported by key persons. A personalised curriculum is created to meet their learning, development and care needs and is delivered through a relational approach while adopting an ethic of care to ensure all babies thrive.

The key person approach enables practitioners to follow individual children’s needs and tailor this based on their own routines. For example, following their sleep and feeding patterns and how best to facilitate such experiences to not disrupt their typical routines. While we endeavour to provide this for individual children’s needs, the nursery environment is very different to home with distractions that may not make this a seamless process. While our staff strive to provide quiet and calm spaces, the baby room is a sensory rich environment which is not only fundamental to learning and development but inspires curiosity and joy for all.

“Empathy is one of our highest human skills and holds families and societies together. Feeling connected to other people is probably the deepest satisfaction we will ever know. How terrible for children who are being brought up without that capacity” - Sue Gerhardt

Acorn provides coracles for our babies to relax throughout the day, positioned in accessible, quiet and cosy spaces so babies can signal when they feel tired and need a rest. Our well-trained staff can tune in to babies’ individual needs, having learned about their daily routines, and with a sound knowledge of what babies need to thrive, minimising the stress that unrecognised needs may cause. In the warmer months, we make the most of the weather and where possible, encourage the babies and children to sleep outside, closely monitored by our staff.

Acorn staff recognise and understand the importance of providing quality care and learning opportunities for babies and embed our five core values when implementing this through our relational pedagogy and ethic of care. One of these values is the need for staff to keep abreast of new information through research and guidance, such as the need for babies to be in environments that encourage and support development through their eight sensory systems – visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, vestibular, proprioception and interoception. While these senses initially develop independently, in their first years they reach sensory integration of all the senses bolstered and encouraged with rich environments and responsive, high-quality interactions.

Babies are curious to learn about the world around them and at Acorn, have opportunities to appreciate the natural world by exploring natural, open-ended resources and high-quality wooden toys and sensory experiences to engage in experiential play in environments with a biophilic design. Babies benefit from being outside, exposed to natural elements, sunlight and fresh air, contributing to babies’ mental health, emotional and physical wellbeing all year round where they experience and explore the changing seasons first hand. The weather in the UK is rarely predictable, so ensuring suitable clothing for all weathers is essential for outdoor play to be an enjoyable experience for all.

“Children must master the language of things before they master the language of words” – Friedrich Froebel

Being part of the community at Acorn gives babies a sense of belonging which boosts their confidence and social skills. Their community is not limited to the people within each nursery but extended to the communities around them as they venture out for local walks to connect and engage with the wider public and services. Most of our settings are fortunate to have shops, libraries, parks and scenic walks on their doorstep, enabling them to venture out and learn about the diverse world around them.

“Children are like tiny flowers: They are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers” – Friedrich Froebel.

We recognise that parents know their children best and value the important role they play in supporting their child’s learning and development. Key persons work in partnership with them to keep them well informed about the progress they are making and how they can support their learning at home. All parents will be invited to a parent consultation at least once a term where they can share and celebrate their babies’ achievements and journey with us.

“If we value our children, we must cherish their parents” – John Bowlby.

Demonstrating an ethic of care and responsive approach enables babies to feel valued, respected and cared for and to see caring relationships with professionals and peers when at nursery and with their family. This helps to nurture their social and emotional wellbeing at an important and precious time in their lives, right from the start and throughout their journey with Acorn, paving the way towards a more connected and caring society.

Becky Watanabe