Page 8 - eBook

Week Two:
Build a Bug Hotel

Although perhaps not for the faint of heart (or
those who truly hate bugs), creating a bug hotel from
scratch is another great way to introduce your child
to a more forest school-like experience. A bug hotel
also invites more bugs to your garden or to a certain
park which is quite important for a well-functioning
ecosystem. However, keep in mind that you may want
to keep this bug hotel far away from any food crops
you may have as these could infest. Nonetheless, bug
hotels are also great hideaways for insects which
may have a hard time finding a safe space in a garden
which is full of other kinds of materials.

To create a bug hotel, your child can use just about
anything that is found in your garden, a park, a forest,
and so on. The best time to create such a hotel is
usually in the autumn as most natural materials such
as straw, dry grass and dry to medium-dry wood are
most easily found during that time of the year. You
can use any kind of natural ‘building materials’, includ-
ing old wooden pallets, strips of wood, straw, moss,
dry leaves, woodchips, old terracotta pots, old roofing
tiles, bricks with holes, old logs, bark, pine cones,
sand, soil, hollow bambo canes, dead hollow stems
cut from shrubs and herbaceous plants, a sheet of
roofing felt, planks of wood, and others .

Depending on your child’s age, you may wish to pre-
pare a few things in advance for him or her to make
sure that they are all set with what they need. Other-
wise, leave them free to roam around to search for the
best items they can find.

This activity fosters more development in certain
areas of learning, including communication and lan-
guage again as your child will need to communicate
with you and potentially with others if you choose to
do this activity with other children. Moreover, kids can
gain a better understanding of the world by learning
more about how bugs contribute to the environment,
and how bugs are friends (even if they can be offput-
ting at first!). Finally, your kid can develop his or her
expressive arts and design skills by creating a hotel
for bugs based on their own imagination and what
they think it should look like.

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