Our beach school works slightly differently to others. Each week, we set up 4-6 different activities around a general theme - tides, wind, animals, fauna, night and day etc. Children can opt in or out of the activities as much or as little as they like. We usually find, for the first two weeks, just being on the beach, playing in sand and mud, paddling in the water is exciting enough. Slowly, they start to make beelines for the types of activity they enjoy.
For those who attend regularly, we try to plan activities around their interests, to continue to develop these.
All our activities are designed to help learn through play. We revisit many themes, in different ways, to reinforce and develop learning.
A little 18 month old told me last week the tide was in, so we can't find baby crabs here, but we can look for big crabs. She's starting to make links. Whilst a 4 year old who attends regularly was asking me why the mud has changed as its become colder and what the new stones appearing are. Seasonal changes are remarkable and small people have wonderful noticing skills she given the time and space to notice!
In this blog, I plan to write a monthly reflection about our learning. I will also include some of our activities so parents can mimic these at home (or in case they want to do them with older ones too!)
I hope it will be useful for all of us.
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