Halfway Through 2025 Already!

Can you believe we're already six months into 2025? Time certainly flies when you're busy growing community and connecting with nature.

Funding Update & Upcoming Sessions

As many of you are aware, we are eagerly anticipating the outcome of our funding application to the National Lottery. This funding is essential for us to continue providing funded community forest school sessions for pre-school children and, excitingly, to expand this offering to better support our Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) community. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a positive result!

Meanwhile, we've scheduled some paid sessions to keep our forest school thriving. We have an exciting full day of forest school sessions for the community on Saturday, June 7th.

• From 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM, we will hold our dedicated family SEND sessions.

• The afternoon will be open to the wider community.

These sessions are filling up fast, so if you're interested in joining us, please book soon to avoid missing out!

We've also added some Monday afternoon dates, ideal for our home-educated families and children not yet attending school. After discussing with many of you during our sessions, there was interest in attending these paid sessions as we await funding decisions. These paid sessions are crucial for maintaining our community interest company. Currently, we don't have enough participants for these Monday sessions to proceed, so if you're considering joining, please book your spot! Your support is immensely valuable.

Busy Times Ahead: Consultant Support in Education

This June, I will be allocating a substantial amount of time to another aspect of our business: consultant support in education. I have three school improvement visits planned, beginning next week in Coventry. I'll spend two days at the school, meeting with senior leadership, observing lessons, interacting with children and staff, and reviewing governance.

These school improvement visits are extremely busy and mentally demanding. They require absorbing a lot of information to support and challenge schools in their self-evaluation process, ultimately aiming to enhance outcomes for pupils. The focus is on validating school self-evaluations, pinpointing areas for improvement, and strengthening the school's capacity for ongoing development.

During these hectic times, my ability to respond to emails and social media messages may be limited. Please be patient, and I assure you that I will reply as soon as possible.

Exciting New Funding Application!

We're currently working on another funding application with Jan from Swanside Community Centre and Chris from Primal Mentality. This application is designed to expand the amazing work we've been doing with the youth club at Swanside. We have some truly exciting plans for this project, so please wish us luck as we need to submit this application by Friday, June 6th!

Let's Talk in the Trees One-Year Celebration Success!

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who attended our "Let's Talk in the Trees" one-year celebration event! It was wonderfully well-attended, with up to 45 children joining us over the two sessions. This fantastic turnout truly highlights the community demand for these sessions.

Your continued support and enthusiasm mean the world to us. Remember to keep those fingers crossed for the National Lottery Community Fund!