As part of our commitment to the development of our staff, we hold four training days every year, covering a variety of sessions that develop our staff teams' skills, knowledge, confidence and provides up-to-date changes within the Early Years sector.

We started 2024 with a training day on Tuesday 20th February for our Northamptonshire & Bedfordshire nurseries and another on Wednesday 21st February for our nurseries in Milton Keynes.

Thank you so much to all our trainers who provided brilliant and insightful sessions to help inspire and expand the knowledge of our staff teams!

Across these two days we welcomed…

• Jon Manning, at Arthur Ellis, who delivered a wellbeing workshop

 

• Ellie Collar, who delivered a course supporting our practitioners to identify when young children may have additional needs and how to carry out quality initial assessments 
• Ben Kingston-Hughes, who delivered a course on the importance of boisterous play in play settings 
• Tammie Redman, who delivered a course on basic safeguarding 
• Nick Barnes, who delivered a course on the principles of fire safety and the role of the fire marshal 

• Chris Knight, who delivered two courses, one on green woodworking and one on tool sharpening - perfect for all our forest school leads

• Tigerlily Training, who delivered paediatric first aid training with EFAW

We also held sessions delivered by our internal trainers. Here are some of them:

• Becky Watanabe (our Early Years Manager), who delivered a course on the curriculum in practice
  
  
  
  
• Laura Tingey (our Head of Early Years & Compliance), who delivered a course on recognising the signs of domestic abuse and the support that is available
  
  
• Becky Watanabe and Laura Tingey also delivered a joint course called 'Lift off to learning!'
  
  

• Kim Langstaff (our Early Years Manager), who delivered a safeguarding course, as well as a compliance course focused on developing our staff understanding of the statutory elements of the baby room and how this is embedded within our day-to-day practice
  
      
  
  
• Santa Svike (our Sustainability Lead and Governance Lead), who delivered a workshop which explored the meaning of sustainability and how to develop eco-friendly practices. Kat Martin, our gardener also joined the workshop and introduced our staff teams to the basics of gardening
  
  

• Tamara Farish (our Training & Development Manager), who delivered a course on leadership & management - perfect for our senior and lead practitioners, nursery deputies and managers, and anyone who leads others to achieve a common goal
  
  
  
  
• Sue Fenton (our HR Manager), who delivered a course on team building
  
   
  
  
• Zoe Raven (Acorn's CEO), who delivered a course exploring how gender stereotyping starts at birth and how we can help to improve gender equality in the future

  

What a successful set of training days to kick off our 2024 staff training! Our staff teams cannot wait to share and implement the new things they have learnt, within the nursery settings!