Insect Hotels and Water Exploration

The children in Year 4 have been researching insect habitats. Today, they continued designing their additions to the school insect hotel. Hacksaws were used to cut lengths of bamboo, which make great homes for insects such as solitary bees. Plant pots were stuffed with wool to provide nesting material for birds. Logs were drilled with holes using hand drills to provide homes for insects such as ladybirds. Insect hotels provide homes for pollinators (like bees and lacewings) and pest controllers (like ladybirds who eat aphids). They also provide a valuable food source for amphibians, birds and mammals.

The children braved the downpours to fill the insect hotel with their contributions. In the afternoon, the Year 4 Forest School group added a few more materials to the insects hotel and ensured that everything was packed in tightly. They also attached some magnifying glasses to allow people to closely observe any visitors to the hotel. There is still space for more materials to be added, but it is already looking rather inviting I am sure you will agree.

After the deluge of rain over the last few days, the school waterbutts were overflowing. 

The Year 4 Forest School group could not pass up the opportunity for a spot of water play and exploration. The children began by using rubber gloves with holes pierced in to create water paintings on the dry paving stones. This quickly evolved into seeing what receptacles they could use to transport water from one place to another most effectively. Our Forest School cups were easy to fill but could only hold a small amount of water. A quick rummage through our gardening store revealed some watering cans and lengths of guttering. The children used these to construct a water course on which they could propel boats fashioned from leaves. They tried out different shapes and sizes of leaves to see which would travel the fastest. This led to a challenge to see how far they could extend their water course

A few more lengths of guttering were acquired from Nursery and discussions ensued about how best to angle, link and overlap the guttering in order to make the water travel from one place to another most effectively. They experimented with steeper slopes, stepped sections and different methods of pouring in the water.

At the end of the session we thought about questions we could take back to class based on our investigations. The ones we came up with were:

Can you think of examples in the world around you of how water is transported from one place to another?

Can you think of ways water can be made to travel uphill?

Session Flow

·         mummy wrap warm up game (directed)
·          insect hotel filling (directed)
·         rubber glove filled with water from tap (child initiated)
·         glove filled from waterbutt (suggested)
·         hole made in glove to water paint (suggested)
·         cups filled with water from water butt (child initiated)
·         guttering provided (directed)
·         water poured down guttering from cup (child initiated)
·         watering can found and filled with water (child initiated)
·         water poured from can into guttering (child initiated)
·         leave boat provided (directed)
·         more leaf boats made (child initiated)
·         water poured into guttering to make leaf boats move (child initiated)
·         guttering moved to make steeper (child initiated)
·         guttering moved to make stepped waterfall (child initiated)
·         more guttering provided (directed)
·         water course extended to make water go further (child initiated)
·         guttering adjusted (overlapping) to prevent water loss (suggested)
·         water holding containers collected from class one provision (child initiated)
·         containers used to fill guttering with water (child initiated)
·         boat shaped container sailed own guttering (child initiated)
·         two gutter tracks created for water race (child initiated)