Widcombe Acorns Pre-School and Forest School

Daily Forest School, a garden with a willow tunnel and regular explorations of Bath give Widcombe Acorns a clear character: outdoor learning sits alongside city life. Based at St Marks Community Centre in Widcombe, this charitable preschool combines space for physical adventure with quieter places for stories and small-group work. Children can grow food, experiment with construction materials and use the surrounding community as part of their learning.

At its July 2025 inspection, Ofsted rated the setting Outstanding overall and judged safeguarding effective. Acorns has 25 places in total; its day-care offer is for children aged three to five. That is whole-setting capacity, rather than the size of an individual activity group.

A standard day and separate morning or afternoon sessions sit alongside bookable wraparound care. The practical appeal is the combination of those attendance choices with an outdoor programme that runs through the seasons, rather than an occasional woodland activity.

Rooms and Ages

Acorns has exclusive use of rooms towards the back of the community centre. Neutral walls and resources stored behind curtains keep the interior visually simple. A large main room gives children room to spread out, while a smaller quiet room accommodates stories, registration and work with smaller groups. The home corner includes a den and materials children can use imaginatively.

These spaces serve different kinds of play. Cable reels and tubes can become the starting point for an investigation, while the quieter room gives a smaller activity somewhere separate to happen. Indoor opportunities include yoga, movement games, creative work and board games. The day alternates between children choosing their own exploration and adults guiding an activity, giving both approaches a place in the routine.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage provides the shared educational framework: children develop communication, physical skills and relationships through play, alongside learning in mathematics, literacy, the arts and understanding their world. Acorns builds its curriculum around children's interests, combining practical investigation with adult guidance. Attention goes to how children explore and work something out, rather than simply producing a finished object.

Daily dance brings different music and movement into the routine. Registration includes greetings in different languages, and Makaton, signing used to support communication, forms part of everyday activity as well as regular singing-and-signing sessions. Families can contribute songs and phrases from languages spoken at home. This gives communication a practical place in shared play and conversation.

In July 2025, mapping activities began with routes to local destinations and journeys from home, before children made their own representations of familiar landmarks. Another activity used water bottles and numbers chalked at different heights outdoors, combining hand-strength practice with aiming. These examples show how a familiar place or simple resource can support several kinds of learning, rather than requiring a separate lesson for each skill.

Outdoor and Community Life

Forest School adds daily outdoor exploration, including den-making, woodwork and cooking outside, to the educational framework. Its approach gives children opportunities to consider manageable risks, use tools and solve practical problems while developing familiarity with the natural world. Outdoor learning continues across the seasons. Weather is part of the experience.

The garden has two areas. One accommodates trikes and scooters on a firm surface, construction equipment, a storytelling stage and a willow tunnel. A planting area gives children somewhere to grow food for harvesting and cooking during the summer term. The Forest School space includes trees for climbing, a rope swing and a base camp used for singing and fires. These are different settings for movement, imaginative play and shared practical tasks.

Bath also becomes part of the learning environment. Regular local explorations include the Egg Theatre, the river, woodland, a garden centre and city exhibitions. The mix matters: children encounter places used by their wider community as well as spending time among trees. In July 2025, a woodland construction activity involved children discussing their plans and passing materials to one another as they assembled a walkway, making cooperation part of the task itself.

Relationships and Communication

Every child has a key person who helps with settling, maintains contact with the family and follows learning targets. Children also build relationships with the wider staff team. Parents can speak daily with practitioners and the key person, while newsletters and displays communicate activities and events. Once children have settled, parents are invited to spend sessions alongside them, giving families a way to understand the day through participation.

The usual staffing arrangement is at least one adult for five children, better than the legal minimum of one adult for eight children aged three and over. This is a staffing measure, not a promise about group size. It gives practitioners more scope to join play and respond to individual children, alongside the key-person arrangement.

At the July 2025 inspection, Ofsted found exceptional progress and closely tailored support for children with SEND, with key people planning individual next steps and working with families and outside professionals. Home visits, particular storybooks and stay-and-play sessions were among the arrangements used then. The important distinction is individual planning: support was shaped around the child rather than one settling routine applied to everyone.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

A SENCO coordinates additional-needs support with key people, parents and external agencies. The graduated approach involves assessing needs, planning support, putting it into practice and reviewing it. A My Plan, an educational support plan, can record targets alongside a profile of the child's strengths and needs. Makaton and visual timetables are also used in daily practice, providing ways to communicate beyond spoken instructions alone.

Where needed, the preschool can discuss referrals and applications for inclusion support with families. Adjustments may involve changing furniture arrangements, adding visual markers or obtaining resources. Transition support can include meetings with the receiving setting, familiarisation activities and sharing SEND records with parental consent. More generally, teachers are invited to meet children before they move on, and learning information can be passed to the next setting with permission.

Medication procedures require written parental permission and restrict administration to medicine prescribed for the individual child. Each administration is recorded and communicated to parents. Safeguarding arrangements include a lead and deputy, with concerns recorded and referred through the appropriate agency route; volunteers and students are not permitted unsupervised access to children.

Sessions and Attendance

The standard full-day session runs from 9.30am to 3.30pm. Morning attendance is 9.30am to 12.30pm, while the afternoon runs from 12.30pm to 3.30pm. Acorns operates to a term calendar, with dates set out for the 2026–2027 year. This makes the term pattern an important part of family planning alongside the choice of full or half days.

Wraparound sessions are offered Monday to Friday and must be agreed beforehand. Breakfast Club runs from 8.15am to 9.30am; Early Start covers 9am to 9.30am, and Late Finish runs from 3.30pm to 4pm. Extended Hours, from 4pm to 4.30pm, operate on certain days subject to demand. Wraparound bookings can be paid for in advance at the beginning of each month, so that final extension should be treated as a conditional arrangement when planning a working day.

Getting There

The address is St Marks Community Centre, St Marks Road, Bath, BA2 4PA. Questions about sessions or fees go to office@widcombeacorns.co.uk, with telephone enquiries on 01225 445446.

Funding and Paid Extras

Government-funded childcare is offered for three- and four-year-olds, including the 30-hour scheme, with up to six flexible funded hours in a day. Families are asked for a voluntary contribution towards funded hours. Additional non-funded core hours and wraparound care have separate charges; current prices come in the nursery's written quotation.

The admission and fees information also explains that insufficient voluntary contributions could lead to a review of the funding model and changes to funded-place arrangements. That condition matters when assessing the longer-term cost and shape of attendance.

• Outdoor participation. Daily Forest School includes tool use, den-building and cooking outdoors across the seasons. On a visit, discuss how practitioners introduce these experiences to a child who is hesitant about outdoor activity.
• The end of the day. Late Finish ends at 4pm, with the extension to 4.30pm dependent on demand on particular days. Establish which arrangement fits your proposed attendance before relying on the later finish.
• Funding and everyday costs. Contributions for funded hours are voluntary, while wraparound care is charged separately. Ask for a written breakdown covering your chosen pattern, meals and non-food consumables.
• The next application cycle. Applications for 2027 open in January 2027. Families planning that intake should use this timetable when arranging their application.

Widcombe Acorns suits families seeking term-based preschool with either full-day attendance or separate morning and afternoon sessions, supported by agreed wraparound care. Its strongest practical combination is daily outdoor learning, room for quieter indoor activity and regular use of Bath's cultural and natural surroundings. The willow tunnel, growing area and woodland base camp give that approach substance.

The July 2025 Outstanding judgement adds weight to the choice, while the key-person system and detailed additional-needs procedures explain how families participate in their child's care. The main planning points are the term calendar, conditional later finish and funding contribution model. For parents whose schedules fit those arrangements, this is a preschool with a clear educational identity and plenty of practical activity woven into the day.