Mini-Beast Hotel

Tuesday is Nature Studies day in our home-school. Small has been growing veg in her own garden plot over the summer, we tracked rainfall for a month (it has been a wet summer, there was A LOT OF RAIN) we also go on regular nature walks.

Earlier in the summer we were inspired by the RSPBs 'give nature a home' campaign, and decided to build a Mini-Beast Hotel in our garden.

We've been clearing out a lot of building debris from the garden recently so there was tonnes of stuff lying about. For what it is worth all of it was covered in bugs before we even got started - the mini-beasts didn't seem too fussy that it was a pallet of bricks and slates and not a dedicated 'bug house'

To make your own Mini-Beast Hotel you just need a stack of old usable building materials and some garden waste. Here is a short list of what we used.

Old bricks
Roof slates
Planks of wood
Twigs - cut and bundled
Broken clay pipes
Broken terracotta plant pots
15mm plastic pipe - cut and bundled
Damp wood chips
Dry grass and leaves
Bundled chicken wire
Stones

So far most of what we have seen is spiders but I figure most of the beasties keep themselves hidden away... either that or the spiders have eaten them all.