Welcome to Acorns.

We are registered to offer 24 places each day to children between the age of 3&4 years.

Norton Fitzwarren Preschool is an Early Years setting, which is an integral part of the school.  

We have spacious indoor and outdoor areas for our children to explore, including our popular muddy area, allotment, and field. We ensure they are always interesting, challenging and stimulating for our children.

Our ethos is based around children as individuals so, rather than planning around topics and themes, we use the children’s play to inform our planning in the moment, making the most of every learning opportunity while the children are engaged and happy. 

We are proud of being an inclusive community, and we accept and value all of our children and their families. We like to have as much information as possible about children’s lives at home, and are open to parents’ suggestions if there is anything we can do better to make them feel welcome. 

Learning through play and in the moment.

We know that each of our children is unique and has their own way of learning, and we want them to develop a true thrill for learning for its own sake, rather than seeing it as something imposed on them from outside. We plan in the moment, as the children are playing and using all of their senses, because we know this is when and how they learn best.

We encourage them to explore, investigate and find out for themselves, with sensitive adults who can scaffold and extend their knowledge and understanding, their vocabulary, their mathematical thinking, and more. 

So, how does this work?

Instead of using the same planning, based around the same topics, year on year, we get to know our children really well and support their learning through what is important to them, whether that be a deep-rooted interest in dinosaurs or a momentary fascination with a spider on the window. We identify the next developmental steps for each child and use those to inform what we do, so that every individual child is learning at his or her own rate and in their own way.

We aim to make our environment interesting and stimulating, and we know that commercially made toys do not always offer the maximum learning potential. For example, plastic construction sets have their place, they fit together in certain ways and can be useful for children to develop manual handling and design. However, a pile of pebbles as a construction set offers so much more. Each one has a different size, feel, shape, smell, weight, and the process of building a tower with them requires a lot of trial and error, while children work out that size order can be useful and that different shapes balance in different ways. So, although a visitor to our preschool may be surprised to see sticks, stones, tyres and crates among our playthings, our view is that our children’s experiences should never be limited to what the commercial world thinks is good for them.

Meet our Team.

Mrs Stephens 

Preschool Manager/

Senco Co-ordinator

 Mrs Palmer 

Deputy Early Years

  Practitioner

Miss Nicholls

Apprentice Early Years 

  Practitioner