A FOREST pre-school available to families in Rawtenstall is in need of £18,000 in order to keep serving the community.

Wonderful Little Things, an outdoors activities group run from St Mary’s CE Primary School, can no longer continue providing opportunities for toddlers and pre-schoolers to exp-lore the natural world as its Lottery funding has now run out.

More than 60 families benefited from the six weekly session prog-rammes of outdoor story-telling, cooking, small animal hunts, den and model den building, wildlife art, mud play, flag making, leaf prints, sensory games, hide and seek and more, over the first 12 months it was running.

Kate Crane, organiser and business support officer at the school in Haslingden Old Road, said all the youngsters and their parents that exper-ienced the sessions des-perately wanted the programmes to continue.

She said: “The positive impact of the groups on children’s development is amazing.

“We had children who were very introverted, who had never even spoken before, become chatty, bubbly and outgoing from just one or two sessions.

“A portion of the children that came to the sessions had never even played on grass before and were frightened of the outdoors.

“The change you saw in them was incredible. It gives children such confidence, and curiosity about the world, being able to explore nature and wildlife.

“It would be really sad for local families if we can’t carry on the sessions, but we’re going to be doing everything we can to get funding for another 12 months. We’re also plann-ing to train teaching assistants at the school to run the sessions, to keep costs down and make the project more sustainable.”

Wonderful Things, the school holiday sessions, will continue as normal.

The team are also looking for donations of anything that could be recycled to be used in the forest school by the groups. To contact Kate about the project, email k.crane@rawtenstall-st-marys.lancs.sch.uk.