Insect Hotel is an art project for children, collecting natural material and building hotels for insects.

This week in Insect Hotel the children started off by thinking about where insects like to live in other words what cosy places and spaces they might like to sleep in. As a group all the children lay down on a giant piece of paper. They had to lay in the shape they thought insects would fall asleep in. The adults then drew around the children in their sleeping positions.

It was wonderful to see all the shapes and patterns created once the children stood up and checked out the marks they left behind.

After this we set about building a shelter over our giant piece of paper. We took blankets and rope and twigs and any other things in the room and built a shelter as a group. This was a great activity as some of the children got really involved in decorating the shelter while others were more interested in construction.
Once our shelter was built all the children got inside under some blankets and got cosy. Here we talked about insects and some facts about them, the children knew quit a lot of facts about insects.

After the cosy time in the shelter we got a demonstration about how when leaves and twigs fall outside they create little spaces and pockets. It is in these spaces and pockets that insects like to live and hide. The children were shown how to construct an insect hotel using a terracotta pot some bamboo sticks tied together some leaves and some twigs.

All the materials are packed tightly in the pot and covered with the netting that oranges come in.

Once constructed the children then decorated them with feathers, string and coloured tape
As a group we then ventured outside to explore the grounds of The Model we were looking for insect hiding places and for materials so that we could build more hotels. Once back indoors all the children gathered round a big sketch book and drew pictures of what we think insects would like.Where they would like to live. What they would like to eat. All children left with their insect hotels ready to place in their gardens and a bag of gathered materials to make more hotels.

They left with lots of smiles all round.