A school is turning its outdoor area into a community project as they work to improve youngsters physical development.

Napier Primary Academy in Gillingham has been appealing to its neighbours and parents to help create an outside space which will improve learning for its pupils.

Courteney Coutinho, leader of the Early Years Foundation Stage at the school, in Napier Road, said: "The quote ‘it takes a whole village to raise a child’ is very much the case," she said.

The Academy has already received lots of support from parents, donating equipment and offering their services after Ms Coutinho sent a letter home appealing for random items such as guttering and tyres.

She said: "Our EYFS space is very much a blank canvas as we have very little outdoor resources for the children to use.

"As we still want them to be able to have the opportunity to continue their learning outside, we have put indoor resources outside in indoor storage units but because they are not designed to be outdoors, they are all getting damaged very quickly."

The Academy are particularly keen to create the outdoor space after witnessing the long-term effects of the Covid lockdown on pupils.

"Unfortunately, we have noticed a huge area of concern with regards to children’s gross motor skills since Covid, as they were all kept inside and not able to develop their core muscles which in turn means poor fine motor skills and handwriting," Ms Coutinho said.

"We understand that to improve this we need to give these children ample opportunities to create big movements using all parts of their body and the best way of doing this is outdoors as they are not restricted by walls and tables.

"A lot of our children also live in flats which means restrictive access to the outdoors so we realise our job is even more important to provide these young children with an amazing outdoor area."

The Academy has already received donations from Benchmarx in Gillingham, who provided the area with a kitchen sink which is going to be used to build a mud kitchen. While B&Q Gillingham donated £50 worth of store vouchers.

Volunteers have been helping at the school today (Sunday) and the school hopes more people will join them on Wednesday to help transform the space.

But there are still some parts of the project the Academy is unable to complete due to funding, including making a stage from decking panels and creating a sand shed for the nursery.

Ms Coutinho said: "We are currently looking for wood and building materials to build some new outdoor furniture, outdoor paint and varnish, outdoor storage to keep our resources safe, climbing equipment, a shed so we can put sand inside, digging materials like sand, bark, soil and little stones so we can create a construction digging area, rubble bags, plants."

"Any help from companies would be greatly appreciated to help us make this dream come true."

In keeping with the community aspect of the project Ms Coutinho promises she will be posting progress updates on social media and tagging companies that are supporting the work.