In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Each day of the year I will post something here about nature. It may be any format, a photo, video, audio, sketch or entry from my nature journal. It could be a written piece. Each day I will connect to nature in some way and share it here by the end of that day. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed or be notified by email. See all the 365 Nature posts.
Recently I volunteered to help out at my daughter’s outdoor preschool by building an insect hotel. Today I went into the class and talked about what kind of insects might live in a hotel and what kind of materials we might gather. After that we went for a walk around the arboretum and picked up cones, branches, lichens, leaves and other materials we found on the ground. We’d had a windstorm about a week ago and as a result there was a lot of debris on the ground, just off the trails. We found a tall branch we plan to attach tin cans to to make a tall insect hotel. In the cans we’ll add sticks, lichens, cones and other materials. A parent brought a pallet and some bricks so we can use that to add materials to. On Friday I get to go back and help build the insect hotel with the class with the materials we gathered.
During our walk to look for materials, the kids found insects already on some of the branches and mosses they picked up. Under a chunk of bark I found some slug eggs and nearby we found a Leopard Slug. The kids looked at the slug and eggs before putting the bark back over the eggs.
