A fabulous new Ofsted report is out for Little Acorns Nursery, Clayton-le-Woods, Chorley. Published on 30 September 2025, it follows an inspection earlier that month. Parents and local families will be delighted to learn that, once again, Little Acorns Nursery was rated as ‘Good’ across all categories. That’s a high rating for overall effectiveness, the quality of education, the behaviour and attitudes of those attending, the personal development of staff, and the quality of leadership and management at the setting. A clean sweep! It’s news that will instil confidence in families that are considering enrolling a child at the nursery, and a clear demonstration that little ones who attend will benefit enormously — and be kept safe.
“What is it like to attend this early years setting?”
“The provision is good” — Ofsted.
Overall effectiveness: Good- The quality of education: Good
- Behaviour and attitudes: Good
- Personal development: Good
- Leadership and management: Good
Overall effectiveness: GoodLet’s take a look at some of the positive findings and encouraging comments from the Ofsted Inspector who prepared this latest report.
Children Feel Happy, Settled,
Safe & Secure at the NurseryThe Ofsted Inspector could clearly see that children at Little Acorns are happy and feel at home at the nursery:
“Children are happy and settled at the nursery… Staff help children to learn important language, such as to describe their feelings. This helps children to feel safe and secure at the nursery.” — Ofsted.
She later also remarked that staff “are responsive to children’s needs, feelings and moods” and “encourage children to express and say what they feel,” later concluding in the report that “Children’s well-being is supported effectively.”
A Positive Attitude to Learning
As the Ofsted Inspector said in her report, “Children make good progress in their learning of the nursery’s curriculum”, and she recognised the positive approach to children’s learning at the setting:
“Leaders are ambitious for children’s learning and development. They are clear about the knowledge that they want children to learn and why.” — Ofsted.
And, with that in mind, it was clear to the Inspector that children’s learning and development are nurtured well by thoughtful and attentive staff:
“Staff know the children well. They provide meaningful learning opportunities that build on children’s interests effectively… Children demonstrate a positive attitude to their learning.” — Ofsted.
Children’s Personal Development is Promoted Well
Ofsted’s report also points out that children’s personal development is nurtured very effectively, resulting in them becoming independent and “confident in their own abilities.”
“Leaders make certain that staff promote children’s personal development well. Children benefit from the many opportunities that staff provide to help them to become independent.” — Ofsted.
Help Making Friends
The Ofsted Inspector also recognised the nursery’s positive role in helping babies and children socialise and make friends:
“They develop important knowledge about how to make friends because of staff’s skilful help. Babies show curiosity and are inquisitive about others. Older children are confident when meeting new people.” — Ofsted.
Help Developing Physical Skills
The way the nursery and its practitioners help children develop physical skills was also picked up in the latest Ofsted report. The Inspector sang the praises of the ‘thoughtful’ early years practitioners and the appropriateness of equipment:
“The nursery provides plenty of opportunities for children to develop essential physical skills. For example, staff working with babies provide climbing equipment, such as low-level steps, for babies to explore how they can move their bodies. Staff working with older children provide them with access to large equipment, such as the outdoor slide and wheeled ride-on toys. Children delight in testing out how strong they have become because of the thoughtful help of the nursery.” — Ofsted.
Strong Safeguarding at the Nursery
Ofsted’s inspector applauded the nursery’s “effective” safeguarding arrangements:
“There is an open and positive culture around safeguarding that puts children’s interests first.” — Ofsted.
She also recognised recent safeguarding enhancements. With regard to possible allergens, for example, she remarked:
“The provider ensures that known allergies for children are identified, understood and managed well… It is now a nut-free nursery. Staff have attended relevant training and leaders have strengthened risk assessments.” — Ofsted.
And, with regard to security, she noted the excellent measures in place:
“The provider ensures that the premises are safe and secure […] additional locks and entrance bells have been added to the nursery’s external gate. Staff understand their responsibility to ensure that external doors are locked and that they adhere to the nursery’s risk assessments. Leaders ensure that children are adequately supervised. This ensures the safety of children.” — Ofsted.
Little Acorns Nursery: a High-Quality Childcare Service in Clayton-le-Woods, Chorley
As the latest Ofsted report testifies, Little Acorns Nursery is a great choice if you’re looking for a high-quality childcare service in Clayton-le-Woods, near Chorley. We’re open virtually all year round, support funded childcare places for children aged 9 months to 4 years (inclusive), and give under-fives the best start in life. Contact us today to arrange a guided visit to the nursery, ask any questions, or enrol your child for a nursery place. We can’t wait to meet you!
Little Acorns is an award-winning nursery in Clayton-le-Woods, near Chorley, Central Lancashire, and may also represent a convenient choice for families living nearby in Clayton Brook, Clayton Green, Thorpe Green, Pippin Street, Buckshaw Village, Whittle-le-Woods, Farington, Bamber Bridge, Lostock Hall, Euxton, Leyland, and Penwortham.
In September this year (2025), free childcare for eligible working families expands to 30 hours per week for children as young as just 9 months. Little Acorns Nursery in Clayton-le-Woods is supporting the funding scheme too. Taken usually over 38 weeks* of the year, it means a generous 1140 hours of funded childcare will be available to eligible children in Central Lancashire over the course of a year. For the first time, the funding will cover eligible babies aged from only 9 months and children up to 2, the scheme having previously rolled out to eligible 3-and-4-year-olds last year. An urgent factor to be aware of, however, is that the funding application deadline is only weeks away for those wanting to start in the September 2025 term. So, whether you’re thinking of applying at Little Acorns Nursery or elsewhere, don’t delay your application any longer if you want to access the free funding from September. If your child is eligible and you do not apply by the deadline, your child will not be able to access the free funding for the entire September term. Read on to learn more about the new funding for eligible working families, the deadlines for applications, and the rules that apply.
Helping to make childcare more affordable for working families;
You can apply for funded childcare for eligible working families as soon as your child reaches the age of 23 weeks (that’s just over 5¼ months). If successful, they’ll be able to start using their free childcare hours the term after they reach the age of 9 months. Depending on when that occurs, they’ll be able to start accessing the funded childcare from either the 1st of September, the 1st of January, or the 1st of April, with application deadlines for each being the day before.
Today we look at the wonderful Ofsted report published recently for Little Acorns Nursery in Clayton-le-Woods, Chorley. Ofsted is The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. Their inspector visited this fabulous Lancashire childcare setting in late August and released its official report a month later on 25 September 2024. Our post today spotlights some of the many glowing comments made by the inspector therein, following her visit. It also highlights the reasoning for ‘good provider’ ratings across all areas of the Ofsted report. Take a look and you’ll see why babies, children under five, and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities absolutely thrive at Little Acorns.
Overall effectiveness: Good
Any good nursery or childcare provider will ensure that children understand right from wrong and are mindful of the effect their actions have on others, including peers. Nurturing good manners and appropriate behaviour amongst little ones benefits everyone including, of course, the children themselves. Ofsted’s latest report recognised that Little Acorns is very successful in this regard:
Children find messy play hugely rewarding as well as being immense fun. Messy play nurtures children’s imaginations, creativity, dexterity, and self-expression and benefits them in many other ways. It is therefore a crucial part of early years learning and development — and more important than it perhaps sounds. Ofsted picked up on the quality of messy play activities at Little Acorns Nursery within its report:
With September 2024 arriving, eligible children aged as young as 9 months can now access free childcare in England. The new childcare ‘hours’ are available where working families are eligible for the support and, in tandem, where local childcare providers are set up with appropriate staffing ratios and capacity. The good news, however, is that Little Acorns Nursery, in Clayton-le-Woods, supports the new scheme. It’s therefore with great pleasure that we’re now beginning to welcome children as young as just 9 months of age for free childcare hours at the Chorley setting.
From September 2024 (so already active), eligible children aged from 9 months to 3 years of age can access 570 hours and eligible children aged 3 and 4 can access 1140 hours of free childcare support per year. The free hours are usually taken over the course of 38 weeks (equating to 15 and 30 hours per week respectively). However, some childcare providers may allow the hours to be spread over more weeks of the year by reducing the number of hours per week. Speak directly to your specific childcare provider about the availability of this more flexible option.
Must not have an 
Little Acorns is a wonderful 
Are you are a parent or carer of a child under five? If so, you could learn a lot about childcare, parenting and early years learning and development by following Little Acorns Nursery on social media. We’re active across multiple social channels including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram and share high quality content useful to parents of under-fives. That includes parents of children at Little Acorns although, actually, parents anywhere will find the content educational and useful. Our high quality content includes unusually informative ‘early years’ articles and information. For example, a whole range of guides, the findings from various studies, suggested activities for kids and overviews of things like childcare funding schemes with eligibility guidelines. Also, of course, the social media channels include posts relating to the exciting activities happening at the nursery in Clayton-le-Woods, Chorley.
Follow Little Acorns Nursery on Twitter. There, you’ll see links to some great topics that relate to early years education. You’ll also see regular tweets and posts showing the exciting play and activities that children are taking part in at the nursery.
On Facebook, we share our ‘bigger’ guides and articles from 
We love Pinterest! Its simple, pictorial approach makes it easy to just pick out something that interests you and save it to your own Pinterest pin board, so you can simply save it or share with others. We’ve got lots of pin ‘boards’ on our Pinterest profile, where we’ve pinned images and links to articles that interest us as early years practitioners. We think you’ll like them too. Board topics include nature activities, sensory activities for under-5s, early years parenting, Forest School, outdoor play, preschool, nursery school activities and, of course, Little Acorns Nursery itself.
If you’re on Instagram, check out our photo gallery on our own Instagram profile. It shows images of the children playing and learning at the nursery as well as featured images that link to our highly interesting blog posts.
Little Acorns Nursery is @LittleAcornsNurseryChorley on Google and;
If you have used our childcare service and were pleased, please 
We’re active here on our Little Acorns blog too. Here, you’ll find larger articles that tend to cover the ‘bigger’ topics that parents and carers of children under five will find useful. These are well-researched, detailed and often very educational articles that will keep parents well-informed. For example, we cover topics like 
If you are looking for the very best childcare provision for your child in Central Lancashire, there are a multitude of reasons why you should choose Little Acorns Nursery. Put simply, Little Acorns offers the very best possible childcare service for under-fives — but you don’t need to take our word for it. This is independently verified, as you’ll see below. Take a look at our top 20 reasons to choose Little Acorns Nursery and you’ll soon see why it’s virtually impossible to beat when it comes to outstanding childcare provision.
The quality of teaching, learning and assessment at the nursery was also found to be simply outstanding when Ofsted appraised us. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Little Acorns Nursery has received a number of awards for it’s healthy eating policy. These include a Recipe 4 Health Award and accreditation via the Smiling For Life Award. Each recognises the healthy meals and snacks that we provide to children under our care.
It almost goes without saying that, of course, Little Acorns Nursery has a 5-star food hygiene rating. Once again, that’s the topmost rating. Quality and professionalism are, after all, at the heart of everything we do.
Everything we do at the nursery has a purpose, whether it’s a customised approach to learning for a specific child, the choice of a particular activity or game for another, the purchase of a piece of new equipment, or the way we keep parents informed about their child’s progress each day — there is a reason for everything we do. Ultimately, our goal is to give every child the very best start in life and to equip them to achieve their personal best in every area. In this way, they are given the tools to achieve the very best outcomes in their lives.
Our Forest School should be open from Autumn 2022. Children love Forest School and it teaches them so much about nature, the natural world and ultimately about themselves. 
Providing food for birds is a win-win for everyone — humans and birds alike. Birds obviously get to eat much needed food without huge effort and children get to learn more about nature and perhaps individual bird visitors. (We even name our regulars! “Vern” is a tame blackbird, for example, having been named after a character in the famous movie Rain Man). By encouraging birds to visit, children will soon be able to recognise and name the different species of bird too, particularly if given some help from a parent or bird book. Visitors might include robins, blackbirds, blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits (our favourite), thrushes, starlings and, if they’re lucky, more unusual, colourful birds like nuthatches, woodpeckers, bull finches and gold finches. As it gets colder, some species will travel to warmer countries to overwinter. For those that stay in the UK, however, food from a friendly young nature-lover will be a real lifeline.
If children do get involved in feeding wild birds, they’ll soon begin to realise how delightful the little beings are. They each have their own character, likes and dislikes. Children will get to appreciate this if they keep up the feeding and the birds will soon realise where to find the food each day. Children will get to understand the importance of nature and learn skills like empathy, understanding and responsibility as they nurture the wellbeing of these beautiful wild visitors. Animals, birds and insects are all individuals and it’s good for children to recognise this. By feeding birds and other animals, they will also be able to continue to appreciate nature and the natural world, just like they do in our 
There are many bird feeders available to purchase in supermarkets and local shops, although we simply buy ours as part of our weekly online supermarket shop. Many are quite inexpensive. From fat balls and filled coconut shells, to seed cakes, hanging dispensers and pre-filled seed feeders, the variety available gives parents and children a huge choice. In our own garden, we have found that 
Grated Cheddar cheese (mild and in moderation) will be very popular. Robins, blackbirds, sparrows, starlings, pigeons and doves adore it! Mouldy or ‘blue’ cheese should be totally avoided, though, as the mould could harm or even kill birds. Meanwhile, bread will fill birds up but it doesn’t hold much nutritional value for them, so only feed bread to birds in moderation. It’s incredibly important not to feed them mouldy bread too, or for it to be left to go mouldy once outside. Mould can greatly harm or even kill birds.
The RSPB provides 
Window recesses, higher windowsills and balconies will usually offer some kind of suitable site for feeding birds. Careful choosing of the site for your bird feeders is an important consideration, however, which could make or break your feeder’s success and the wellbeing of the birds you are trying to help.
A Word About Hygiene for Your Family & the Birds
Today we’ll look at the immense benefits of nature to children. While the long-term benefits of nature are reasonably well-known, it turns out short-term exposure to the natural environment also has1 clear benefits for people of any age. The benefits are even more beneficial, though, for young people during their early years, at school and in higher education.
One of the wonderful things about nature is that immersing oneself in it need not cost a penny. With so many proven benefits, it just goes to show that the old adage that ‘the best things in life are free’ really is true when it comes to nature. Exposure to the natural environment and green surroundings has been shown to have clear benefits …
The benefits of restored attention skills in themselves should not, of course, be overlooked. Interestingly, research6 involving cognitive tests on school children found that children who had undergone the tests after walking in a natural wooded environment were quicker to answer – and significantly more accurate in their answers – than those who had instead practised mindfulness in the classroom or who had spent time in the school playground during the break.
Almost Endless Benefits to Children
Greater empathy e.g. taking more care of other living things, plants, etc.;
Just imagine, then, how much children benefit from nature when attending a Forest School setting such as that available at Little Acorns Nursery, Chorley. At Forest School, little ones will spend significant time in local green and wooded spaces, so these findings show just how important Forest School is for youngsters. Why send your child to an ordinary nursery, then, when you can send them to 
