Little Foresters is a small Forest school business which runs out of the beautiful space of Long Eaton Community Garden. Forest school focuses on learning, playing and exploring in a green space. We set up several years ago but became more official, becoming a Community Interest company in 2019. Our aim is for our sessions to be accessible and as such we have always tried to keep our prices low and have aimed to get funding to supplement what we charge. This year, following a meeting with Richard Smallwood at Erewash Partnership, I was introduced by to Adam Bradbery at Andrew Paul Furniture in Long Eaton.
Adam agreed to help cover our shortfall which is a great relief! it means we can avoid any price increases and continue with our two-tier system of payments, allowing families in receipt of benefits to be able to access the sessions with a lower charge. We are running two regular Pre-school groups and a home school group in term time and family fun sessions in the school holidays. Grange Nursery recently came for a whole day of Forest school activities at the garden, including bug hunting, pond dipping, cooking toast on the fire and using hammers and fabric and petals to create art. we also have some stay and play sessions in the pipeline!
With the sponsorship, we also have plans to replace some of our well used equipment and have our eye on some new nets for pond dipping, new bug hunting pots and some new materials for our den kits.
It has taken us until recently times, to get over the effect of Covid on our small business, so we are so pleased to be able to continue what we do and work with local families with the support of the Andrew Paul team.
