I've had a few projects planned for the garden recently and one of them was to make an insect hotel.
We do a lot to encourage wildlife into our garden, so this was just another thing to do and a great way of getting children involved. I got some ideas from Dawn Isaac's book, Garden crafts for Children and also from the Internet.
My husband made the framework from an old bird table and bits of wood he had lying around. He drilled some holes in larger pieces of tree branches and we collected stuff from around the garden, like twigs, leaves and bits of rotting wood. We also used cardboard tubes, drinking straws, pine cones, old plant pots, bits of moss and straw. These are all the sort of materials which bugs like.
Our 8year old granddaughter really enjoyed putting this together, the 6 year old helped a bit, but he prefers to dig up the garden. We placed it in a little corner of the woodland garden. I think the children will be checking each day to see if any bugs have moved in! We enjoyed making it so much that we plan to make a bigger one at the allotment.
