In July 2021 Hook Infant School signed up to become a Wilder School with Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. We wanted to make our school grounds wilder and give our children more ownership of their outdoor learning experience. We set up 'Wilder Flashmobs,' a group of pupils who would walk around our grounds and take part in activities such as ground maintenance, habitat creation, and litter picking.

The flashmobs are great sessions that encourage teamwork and sharing of roles and creates a feeling of accomplishment. It has been really great to see some of the quieter, less confident children come out of their shells when taking part.

Back in July, our flashmobs were working on repairing the pathways in our copse and new willow tunnel. The flashmobs from classes used buckets, spades and rakes to move and spread bark chippings along the pathways and another group laid new weed matting and covered it with chippings to renew the main entrance into the copse.

The bark chippings came from four trees on site that had to be removed. We were really upset at losing them, but as it was out of our control, we were determined that we would reuse as much of them as possible. We kept the trunks as short logs for log piles and seating and the branches were chipped for use as mulch and surfacing for the outdoor learning areas and pathways.

Hook Infant School have lots of plans to continue their wilder journey. The next steps are to create connectivity across the school grounds, joining up the habitats and one of the first of these projects is to start a hedgehog highway. 

Pete West (Wilder School Leader)

Pete West (Network Manager) is the Wilder School Leader for hook Infant School. Already leading Wild Things after school nature club and has now setup Wilder Flashmobs. Pete supports pupils to take action and get involved to find out more about wildlife and help nature to thrive. 

If you want to find out more information about the Wilder Schools programme please click on the link https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/Schools-groups