description

A blog to record our learning while we play and laugh
Showing posts with label bugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bugs. Show all posts

Monday, 12 August 2013

Nature – A Bug hotel

nurturing a nature lover copy
We have been adding to our wildlife corner in the garden and decided to upgrade the insects accommodation by adding a hotel.  There is plenty information online on DIY bug/insects hotel/homes.  Many of the plans use pallets, we don’t have the space for them and I can imagine Luath would use them as a climbing frame.  We planned a small hotel so it would be more stable and fit better in our garden.
For our hotel’s structure we found the bricks on the beach and the pieces of wood in our garden.  We had lots of fun gathering items for different themed rooms in the hotel. It cost us nothing to build and hopefully we will have lots of beneficial bugs making use of it.
   
I also found some broken patterned terracotta pots on the beach which we used to decorate the front of the hotel.  We added Luath’s stone ladybird so the bugs knew they were welcome.  As Luath would say “Come in, come in, you're welcome in”.
 
While I was hunting for wood I found an old bed post which we utilised to make an architectural unique bug hotel.  We attached some flower pots to the hole in the post and then filled these with grasses, twigs etc.  We placed this behind the bug house.
 
bug hotel
(Luath is 30 months)
Shared with Tuesday Tots and Eco Kids

Sunday, 30 June 2013

VBC summer camp - Bug Friendly Area in our Garden

We are joining the virtual book club summer camp hosted by The Educators' Spin On It, Rainy Day Mum and Toddler Approved. To get into this week’s theme of bugs we reread Luath’s favourite two bug books What The Ladybird Heard and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Earlier this year we started creating a bug friendly area in our garden and this week we did a little more work on it.Natural England have a downloadable leaflet “Minibeasts in your garden” which is very helpful.  Flowers, places to hide, hot spots and dead stuff are what insects need and the leaflet explains each of these headings in more detail. It is a small L shaped space but we are managing to fit a lot in. This is what we have done so far:

I moved two old insect friendly logs to the new spot.  We spotted a few inhabitants on one of the logs.  We add some fresher logs from a tree we trimmed.

The corner already has a few slates and we added rocks for more places to hide. We placed a flat one in the sun for butterflies.

Our insect box is now hanging up.

I moved some flowers, we have already sown butterfly and bee friendly flower seeds, and have also let the “weeds” and grass grow.

Maybe not so friendly for the bugs but we made a toad home after finding a toad in the garden.  We can’t find him now but are hoping he will return.

 
We have a small pot dish pool with a stone.  Luath loves refreshing the water.

This week we saw some bees enjoying the flowers and a frog.
   
(Luath is 29 months)
shared with eco kids and country kids from Coombe Mill


Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall Organic Aspirations