Children in Need has given us £10,000 a year for the next three years to continue our outdoor play project at Pulley Park in Bulwell.

Plus we’ve been given £10,000 by Boots Charitable Trust; £6,250 from The Jones 1986 Charitable Trust and £4,000 from the Ella Kirk Charitable Foundation – all of which are based in Nottingham.

The money will help us continue providing services to families and children including our play sessions for 0 to 13 year olds.

We’ve also been awarded £25,000 from a London-based charitable trust that would like to remain anonymous. The money will fund our Language Through Toys and Play project, which works with families one-to-one (at home) to encourage speech and language skills in children who are late talking, or have mild speech and language difficulties.

Many thanks to all our funders for your generous support.

Here’s the press release with all the details

The idea has been inspired by the BBC’s classic ‘Listen with Mother’ radio show which featured stories for little ones read aloud by presenters.

We’re updating the idea for 2012 by developing a website where you’ll be able to listen to stories as a family, with children of all ages.

At the moment, we’re looking for authors who would be happy for us to read their stories aloud as we need the writer’s permission to feature books online.

In the future we’re hoping to expand the project so that local children can get involved in story-writing for example.

We’ll keep you posted!

Reading aloud to children from a young age has loads of great benefits for them and research shows that children who are read to go on to do better at school and in later life.

Click here to read the full story