The half term holidays are rapidly approaching and we're looking forward to our next holiday forest schools. We'll be making lots of woodland crafts, climbing trees, making dens, playing games and cooking up some tasty treats on the campfire. Places are booking up quickly on the following programmes:

St Ives, Bingley 28th & 29th October

Ilkley, Middleton Woods 9-14 year olds 28th & 29th October

St Ives, Bingley 31st October & 1st November

Saltaire 31st & 1st November

Ilkley Middleton Woods 31st & 1st November

Get Out More is delighted to be one of only 5 organisations in the UK to have been awarded government funding for Community Forest and Outreach Projects. From November we will be running Forest Pathways, an exciting 3-year programme of woodland outreach projects with 25 schools in the Bradford district. The programme will offer a range of options from taster sessions to full forest school programmes and staff training, for pupils at eligible Bradford district schools receiving high levels of pupil premium. 

During the summer, we served up over 3000 healthy lunches during our All for Play programme in Keighley, as part of a Healthy Holidays funded project to ensure children eat well in the school holidays. Children helped by chopping vegetables, making fruit kebabs and eating lots of delicious meals whilst taking part in forest school activites such as playing on swings, making tie dye and  building dens. They also visited an allotment to pick home grown food and collect eggs, and foraged for wild food such as blackberries to make blackberry compote with cream and meringue!

Thank you to cook, Rachel Nield from the Healthy Growth Initiative for helping to make this project a great success. 

In a bid to get more people outside enjoying nature and reducing stress levels, Lizzie, has been running a new Woodland Wellbeing programme just for adults. Sessions include activities such as crafts, fire lighting, relaxing in a hammock, going for a wander in the woods and are free to adults in the Keighley Big Local area.

One participant said, "After today its made me realise how much the sessions help people to relax and have fun and I will be coming more often.Thank you again, Lizzie. "

Our staff team is growing so much that we've had to move into a bigger office - here we all are at the last team meeting!

We are very pleased to welcome Hazel Thompson as our new forest school practitioner. Hazel joined us at the beginning of October to work on our  Forest School Play Project and All for Play.

In addition our Project Assistant, Julia Babbitt has recently qualified as a forest school leader and will be working one day a week on our Forest School Play Project as well as continuing with her office role. Well done, Julia!