The Brambles Day Nursery situated on the outskirts of Taunton provided the families at their setting an exciting opportunity to attend 4 Early Healthy Futures sessions. Whilst the nursery already provides an excellent outdoor provision for children to be active, both Laura and Amy (Nursery Managers) were keen to engage more families into the setting.

Early Healthy Futures is a bespoke opportunity for settings and as such have been delivered in a variety of different ways across the county, this time the focus was on family engagement. Families were invited for four separate Friday afternoons (just before pick up time so families had no excuses).

To capture the imagination of the young children, each session followed a different theme: going on a picnic, pirates, flying to space and trains. While it was great to have families playing together, there were other outcomes too with all of the activities developing key skills such as:

• Improved gross motor skills eg. core strength, balance on feet, shoulder stability
• Developing personal, social and emotional skills eg. taking turns, sharing, winning, losing
• Numeracy and Literacy eg. counting, colour recognition and communication skills

A parent said: "We had a lovely time at Early Healthy Futures. It was great to be invited into nursery to play some games with my daughter. Our instructor Stuart was very good at engaging the children and their adults in the activities and made it a lot of fun. He has given us lots of ideas about games we can play at home!"

"It has been a great opportunity for us to welcome Stuart and the Early Healthy Futures programme into our setting. The children have really enjoyed the activities. Stuart was really engaging, the activities were fun and exciting and the themes were of interest to the children. We would gladly run another programme like this with the children in the future." Amy and Laura - The Brambles Day Nursery Managers

For more information or support contact Stuart Kennard on skennard@sasp.co.uk or Dan Tremain on dtremain@sasp.co.uk