Wild Beach Leader: Mrs M Usher

What is Wild Beach? 

Wild Beach takes the ethos of Forest School to the coast.  The fundamental principles of this idea are that children have:

A right to play 

A right to access the outdoors 

A right to access risk 

A right to access the vibrant reality of the natural world. 

Through a series of sessions at the beach, children can explore, develop their curiosity and connect with the coastal environment through informal investigation and exploration. 

We hope, through time spent at Wild Beach sessions, children will become more engaged with their local area, develop the skills to notice natural phenomena such as weather and tides, understand some of the life cycles of marine creatures and learn to respect the coastal area through beach cleans and understanding the importance of our oceans.   

Tasks undertaken at the beach will generally be of a collaborative nature, helping children to develop and maintain many necessary social skills such as active listening, diplomacy, teamwork, turn-taking and sharing.  

Our tasks will also develop and embed many new and existing skills, for example, using rich language to describe the sea state, creativity to make a museum of finds, and geographical knowledge to create a 3-D map. 

On an individual level, for each child, the benefits for mental well-being, from spending time in nature are well-known.  Within a beach environment there is more physical space for a child to explore, giving a greater sense of autonomy and self-governance which are life-skills not so easy to nurture within a structured, school environment. 

Wild Beach has structure to it, it needs to, to ensure the children get the most out of it and stay safe.  However, it is not a structured activity.  It is designed to be relaxed, each session is planned, but should feel as if there is lots of capacity for the children to follow their curiosity.   

What does Wild Beach look like at Heene? 

Our current programme offers two formats for Wild Beach sessions -  

Each class in Years 3, 4 and 5 will visit the beach for one morning a week, over 5 consecutive weeks. 

This gives the children a chance to really explore the beach, to experience different tides, different weather and undertake a variety of activities.  An example of some of the activities on offer is given in the planning below, other activities might include creating a ‘Beach Olympics’, where the children use natural items on the beach to make areas for different sports and games, or sorting beach finds into different types of creature – mollusc, fish, seaweed, crustacean. 

Each class in Years 6, 2, 1 and Early Years will have one ‘Immersive Wild Beach Day’ over the academic year. 

On these days, the class will visit the beach in the morning and engage in beach-related activities back at school in the afternoon.  This offers an opportunity to explore a beach-related topic in more depth as well as follow-up any interesting beach finds from the morning with more information about it.  An example of the Year 6 Immersive Wild Beach Day plan is shown below.  With Early Years, Year 1 and Year 2 we offer a variety of beach-related activities to select from at school, finishing the day with a story.  

We end each session at the beach with a beach clean; this might be in small groups or as a whole class, sometimes we may be competitive and see who finds the most rubbish.  We will discuss finds and how they have come to be at the beach.