Santa came outdoors with us, to see what life we could find up the trees outside our classroom. We have learned that mini-beasts have different habitats, so we figured that some must live in trees.

We took out some big white sheets and some metre sticks. We put the sheets under the trees and gave the branches a whack. As we did this, we watched the sheets, to see what living things had landed on them.

We observed that different trees were home to different mini-beasts. We had a big discussion about whether this was because of the type of tree, the size of tree, the type of leaves it had, or where it was growing (in the sun or in the shade). We found a cool caterpillar on one tree and a big spider on another tree. All the trees had little flies and different beetles and insects.

After finding out that there are lots of different mini-beasts that need different habitats, we decided to build our own habitat. We went off into the woods to gather some sticks, grass and stones. Santa enjoyed his time in the woods helping us gather resources. We made sure that there were no mini-beasts on the sticks that we picked up as we know its important not to remove them from the environment that they are used. to (otherwise they might not survive).  Once we had gathered what we needed, we collected some pallets and took them to an area of left-over turf. We decided that it was a good idea to re-use turf that had been dug up by another class, rather than buying new stuff. Mrs Sherry and Miss Yarrow helped us build the hotel and we added all our sticks, stones and grass etc. When we were building, we found worms, beetles, slugs, woodlice and….a FROG, in amongst the turf. We were all really excited that Santa got to see all that Scottish wildlife.

(Santa keeping an eye on us…making sure we were working hard).

Miss Yarrow is going to bring in some more turf that we can re-use as a roof for our hotel. We feel like we have done a really good job in contributing to the environment with our mini-beast hotel. Now all that is left to do is to make some signs to let people know about it, and encourage them not to touch it so that the wild-life can start moving in.