The Layer Cards

A BUG HOTEL · OUTDOOR LEARNING

Eight cards. They are packed in this order, from the ground upwards, and the order does not change. Every lesson quotes one line from one card. The whole set lives here and nowhere else.

Print this once and keep it at the hotel. It is the only thing a teacher needs in her hand outside.

The size rule applies to every card without exception. Every piece is bigger than a child's fist or longer than a child's hand. Anything smaller goes back on the ground and is not used, whatever card it belongs to and whatever a child wants to do with it.

Nothing living is handled on any card. Handle on these cards refers to the material only.

Card 1 · The Damp Floor

Made of: one flat sheet of cardboard, or a folded piece of old cloth or sacking.
Size: wide enough to cover the whole footprint of the frame in one piece.
Packed: laid flat on soil or on the ground, no gaps at the edges, nothing on top of it yet.
Makes: the one place in the hotel that stays damp when everything above it dries out.
Checked by: looking at the front edge only. Never lifted.
Handle: yes, with both hands, flat.
If you cannot find it: a double layer of any paper packaging, or bare soil scraped flat and left as the floor.

Card 2 · Stones

Made of: stones, broken brick, or lumps of old concrete.
Size: fist sized and bigger. Nothing smaller goes in, ever.
Packed: stacked in the lowest quarter with visible gaps left between them. Not wedged tight.
Makes: cool dark spaces low down that stay cool when the day is hot.
Checked by: looking into the gaps from the front, at the height of a kneeling child.
Handle: yes, one piece at a time, two hands, held low, walking.
If you cannot find it: pieces of broken pot laid flat with the edges facing inwards, or a stack of full drinks cans.

Card 3 · Sticks

Made of: fallen sticks and twigs, dry, not green.
Size: thicker than a child's finger and longer than a child's hand.
Packed: laid in one direction only, loose enough that daylight shows through from front to back.
Makes: long straight tunnels the width of a stick.
Checked by: looking along the tunnels from the open end.
Handle: yes. Any stick with a broken point goes back on the ground.
If you cannot find it: bundled dry stems from any plant, or lengths of dowel, or chopsticks bundled in tens with string.

Card 4 · Bark

Made of: loose bark that has already come away from a tree, picked up from the ground.
Size: palm sized and bigger, flat rather than curled.
Packed: stacked flat, one piece on another, with a small stick laid between every second piece to hold a gap.
Makes: wide flat spaces with a roof, the most used shape in the whole hotel.
Checked by: looking at the open sides of the stack, never by lifting a piece off.
Handle: yes. Bark with a split edge goes back on the ground.
If you cannot find it: flat pieces of cardboard cut to the same size, or thin flat offcuts of wood.

Card 5 · Dry Leaves

Made of: whole dry fallen leaves, brown rather than green.
Size: whole leaves only. Broken pieces blow out and are not used.
Packed: pushed in loose by the handful, then held in place by one stick laid across the front.
Makes: a light rustling space that traps still air.
Checked by: looking at the face of the layer without pushing a hand in.
Handle: yes, by the handful.
If you cannot find it: dry grass, or shredded paper packed the same way, or torn brown paper bags.

Card 6 · Dry Grass

Made of: dry grass, straw, dry stems or hay.
Size: handfuls. A handful counts as one piece for the size rule.
Packed: pushed in firmly, tighter than the leaves, until it holds when you take your hand away.
Makes: a warm dry pocket, the driest part of the hotel.
Checked by: looking at the face of the layer. If it has sagged, it is pushed back with a flat hand.
Handle: yes, by the handful.
If you cannot find it: torn strips of paper twisted into ropes, or coconut fibre, or dry stems from any plant.

Card 7 · Tubes

Made of: cardboard tubes from inside kitchen roll, or short lengths of cut bamboo or hollow stem.
Size: hand length. Nothing shorter, because short tubes fall out.
Packed: stood on end, all facing the same way, packed tight enough that they hold each other with nothing behind them.
Makes: narrow round tunnels, the smallest spaces in the hotel.
Checked by: looking into the open ends from the front, one tube at a time.
Handle: yes. Tubes that have gone soft in the rain are replaced rather than pushed back in.
If you cannot find it: paper rolled around a finger and taped, or drinking straws bundled in tens, or rolled leaves.

Card 8 · Rolled Card

Made of: corrugated cardboard with the ridged inside showing at the cut edge.
Size: a strip as long as a child's arm, rolled into a coil as wide as a fist.
Packed: pushed into the last gaps anywhere in the hotel, ridges facing outwards.
Makes: many narrow slots side by side in one small piece.
Checked by: looking straight at the ridged edge from the front.
Handle: yes, rolled tight and held rolled until it is in place.
If you cannot find it: any thick paper folded into a fan and pushed in the same way.

The Rules That Govern the Cards

The build order does not change

Card 1, then 2, 3, 4, then 5, 6, 7, 8. Heavy at the bottom, light at the top. A hotel built the other way round falls over in the first wind and a class that has watched it fall does not want to build it again.

Nothing here depends on where the school is

Every card names what stands in for the material if the ground around a school does not offer it. A school with a concrete yard and no trees builds a complete hotel from cardboard, paper, drinks cans and one flat sheet. That hotel is not a lesser version and no lesson says otherwise.

No creature is named, expected or promised

This curriculum never says what will move in. Not one species, not one kind, not one number. What arrives depends on the country, the wall, the time of year, the week and luck, and a teacher who has promised a particular creature and gets none has been made to look wrong by her own materials.

Nothing may depend on finding anything

Every checking lesson works completely when the hotel is empty. Finding is the good outcome. Finding nothing is the normal one, and a class may check ten times and see nothing at all. The looking, the naming of layers, the touching for damp and dry, the mending and the closing all stand on their own with an empty hotel. Write it, teach it and say it that way.

The hotel is never opened

Not to look, not to show a parent, not on the last week. A hotel that is taken apart to see inside is a hotel that has been emptied of everything it was built for. Children check by looking into gaps that already exist, and that restraint is the single hardest thing this curriculum teaches.

When something appears that is not on a card

Every session carries this line, in the teacher's own words for that week. Stop. Move every child back one full step. Touch nothing and let nobody else touch it. The adult deals with it alone, and the group carries on somewhere else while she does. This is ordinary practice and it applies in every country, in every season, to every class, including the ones where nothing has ever appeared.

Rain

Rain never cancels a session at this hotel. A wet hotel is a working hotel and the damp floor is doing its job. Where rain genuinely stops a group going out, the session runs at a window within sight of the hotel, or the layer cards are sorted and checked indoors on a table with the materials from the spare pile.

Hands

Hands are washed with soap after every session, every time, whether a child handled a stone or stood and watched. It goes in the standing rules once and no lesson repeats it.