Bug hotels, butterfly feeders and seed bombs!

It’s been a busy few weeks at after school STEM Club for year one and two. Unfortunately we had some technological issues which have prevented me from updating the blog so here is a round up of what we have been up to during the last three sessions before half-term.

We gathered lots of materials form our school community in order to create some additional small scale bug hotels in our wildlife garden. The children were really creative with their designs, ably guided by the STEM Ambassador pupils. The bug hotels will provide additional shelter for the minibeasts that live in our garden.

The following week we were trying to support the eco environment by making butterfly feeders. The children had great fun making these and adding the sugar solution to the centres. We had enough resources left over to make up additional kits for other pupils to make their own butterfly feeder over the half-term break too. Hopefully the butterflies will be very much in evidence in Brandesburton and the surrounding areas.

In our last session we learnt about how important bees are to our environment and briefly looked at a simple version of pollination. We watched a video clip that encouraged us all to do ‘the Waggle Dance’ just like the bees do when they are visiting different flowers. We also had time for a story about how a poorly bee was rescued and we discussed how the children could do this (with an adult) if they came across a very tired bee. Our practical activity for this week was making seed bombs. When the seed bombs are thrown or scattered in a suitable area, wild flowers should spring up that will provide additional sources of nectar for the bees.