Princes Kate Middleton held hands with young children during a royal visit to London’s National Portrait Gallery on Tuesday, February 4.
Kate, 43, was “like one of the moms” as she boarded a school bus, Liz Smith, director of learning and engagement at the National Portrait Gallery, told The Times of London.
“I think she really was one of the group today, an unusual situation. She was part of the school party, like one of the moms and the helpers on the school trip, which always throws up some challenges,” Smith told the outlet.
Kate, wearing a chic brown blazer and navy pinstripe pants, traveled to the gallery with children from All Souls Church of England Primary School in Fitzrovia, London. (Kate has been a patron of the National Portrait Gallery since 2011.)
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In videos and photos published online, the Princess of Wales can be seen getting off a school bus with the children and holding hands with a young girl named Grace.
“Kate had been asked if she would have a partner, and she was sat next to Grace on the coach and Grace had chatted away to her the whole journey,” Alix Ascough, executive head teacher at the school, told Daily Mail.
Ascough said Grace, 5, had no idea who Kate was, adding that most of the children were “completely oblivious” to what was happening.
“She knew it was a very special visitor,” Ascough said of Grace. “We told her she was a princess. She just called her Catherine.”
The children were the first to test a new project from the Royal Foundation’s Centre for Early Childhood, which Middleton founded in 2021.
The new project, known as The Bobeam Tree Trail, is an interactive trail that allows children to use portraits as a basis for a range of activities to develop their social and emotional skills, according to a press release issued to Us Weekly.
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The trail is based on the new Shaping Us Framework, a new study on children’s emotional and social development which Kate penned the foreword of.
“As human beings, we are at our best when we are surrounded by love, safety, and security,” Kate wrote in the foreword of the study. “We thrive when we are connected to one another, when we feel like we belong, feel seen, heard, and accepted for who we are.”
“This means taking a profound look at ourselves and our own behaviors, emotions and feelings,” she added.
