About Better Health Start For Life in Newcastle
The Start For Life Better Health campaign, led by the National Literacy Trust and funded by the Department for Education and the Department for Health and Social Care, encourages parents and carers to adopt positive behaviours to boost their children’s communication, language and literacy development.
The campaign creates easy and accessible resources for parents, carers and early years settings with children aged 0-5, aiming to ensure that all children start primary school with the recommended literacy and language abilities.
In Newcastle, we are delivering the campaign in partnership with Read North East. Keep up to date with the campaign on the Hungry Little Minds North East page.
Newcastle's digitised story trail at Leazes Park
In June 2021, we launched 12 brand new story trails in local parks and lakes across the country for families, carers and early years settings with children aged 2-5.
In Newcastle, the story trail launched at Leazes Park in partnership with Read North East and Urban Green Newcastle, with the bespoke theme of superheroes.
The story trail is based on a story written by children’s author Rebecca Lewis-Oakes and illustrated by Aaron Cushley. The story trail leads families around the local park as they follow the adventures of Uncle Josh, Mia, Kai and their dog Scruffy.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to view the digitised version of the story trail, meaning that all families, carers and early years settings can download the trail to a digital device and carry out the activity whenever works best.
How to use the digitised story trail
- Have your mobile device fully charged.
- Download the story trail PDF
- Pack your park bag! Get some paper and pencils at the ready, as we want to engage your little ones as much as possible
- Head to Leazes Park in Newcastle
- Start the trail by following the map in the booklet
- Carry out the trail with your little one and enjoy all that it has to offer!
- Your feedback is very important to us, so please spare 10 minutes to complete this survey, so that we can hear your thoughts and experiences
The story trail pdf
“As soon as we got a copy of the trail pack and my daughter saw the map, she got really excited and said she loves maps! She loved following the map, walking round the park and reading the story.”