Kate Middleton beams as she joins giddy school kids on minibus for special outing

The Princess of Wales took her early years crusade one step further by arriving at a royal engagement on a minibus packed full of schoolchildren. Kate is known for prioritising doing the school run with Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, but today joined youngsters on a school bus for an outing to the National Portrait Gallery. The future queen boarded the mini bus with four and five-year-old pupils at All Souls CE Primary School in London, in Fitzrovia, making the short journey to Trafalgar Square with them to launch an interactive trail at the Gallery, where she walked with the kids hand-in-hand.

The Bobeam Tree Trail, which is based on work by her Royal Foundation for Early Childhood, was created using the Shaping Us Framework, which outlines 30 social and emotional skills that are crucial to living a healthy, happy life at all ages and which the Princess launched on February 1. Bringing together two of her passions, art and early years development, the outing saw her join youngsters in activities designed around portraits to help them to use and develop these important skills.

The trail is based on a magical tree with beautiful, colourful leaves, which thrives when surrounded by stories. Children were asked to help the tree by discovering the stories of people depicted in the artworks – exploring facial expressions, listening to audio recordings and using props. Kate joined the pupils and teachers as they explored how faces can express feelings and emotions and as they were asked to think about their own lives, feelings and thoughts while creating a self portrait, which they could choose to 'feed' to the tree to help it grow big and strong.

Aimed at nursery and reception age children, the trail is completely free and runs until March 16. The NPG website is also offering related activities to do at home. The Princess, who has been patron of the NPG since 2011, also met its newly appointed Director Victoria Siddall and chief executives and expert practitioners from five other galleries across the UK. Over the course of 2025, The Box, Plymouth, The Lowry, Manchester, Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, National Museums Northern Ireland and Museums and Galleries Sheffield will work with the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood and the National Portrait Gallery to bring the Shaping Us framework to life through their own collections.

Staff at the museums and galleries will also co-design a toolkit to help others across the UK to incorporate the framework into their offerings for younger visitors. The future Queen unveiled the Shaping Us Framework earlier this week, calling on society to "invest in humankind" and "build a more loving, empathetic and compassionate" world. Drawn up by international academics, clinicians and early years practitioners brought together by her Centre for Early Childhood, it is hoped that the framework might be applied across society, in areas such as wellbeing programmes, team building, professional development, recruitment and human resources.

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