Ours to Keep

Original lesson metadata

code: EMP-BHTL-L1-T1-WK10
curriculum_id: a_bug_hotel
curriculum_name: A Bug Hotel
level_id: L1
level_name: All Ages
age_line: around 2 to around 6
term: 1
week: 10
title: Ours to Keep
blocks_this_week: 2
minutes_per_block: 25
weekly_minutes: 50
blocks: [{n: 1, title: On Your Own, In Front of Everybody, minutes: 25}, {n: 2, title: Showing Somebody Who Has Never Seen It, minutes: 25}]
domains: [UW, PSED, M]
objectives: [{domain: UW, text: Runs all three steps of the check with nobody speaking to her}, {domain: PSED, text: Shows a person who has not seen the hotel where to stand and what not to touch}, {domain: M, text: Names the layers in order from the bottom to the top}]
materials: [The Layer Cards]
space: the finished hotel, with room for a visitor to stand at the line beside the group
differentiation: {younger: does step one and step three alone and step two with a hand on an adult's shoulder, older: takes the visitor through all three steps and answers one question about a layer}
watching_for: whether a child tells a visitor the touching rule before the visitor has had a chance to break it
resources: []
version: 1.0
date: 2026-09-04
access: free

A BUG HOTEL · OUTDOOR LEARNING

ALL AGES · around 2 to around 6 · TERM 1, WEEK 10 · 2 × 25


DOMAINS: UW, PSED, M
CODE: EMP-BHTL-L1-T1-WK10
DAY & DATE:

Objectives

UW Runs all three steps of the check with nobody speaking to her.
PSED Shows a person who has not seen the hotel where to stand and what not to touch.
M Names the layers in order from the bottom to the top.

Before you build

The question you will be asked today is what happens to it now. Have the answer ready before you go out, and make it a true one. The hotel stays where it is, nobody takes it apart, and the next group checks it. If your honest answer is that you do not yet know, say that instead, and say who decides.

Your hotel may still be empty. Ten weeks, twenty sessions, and nothing has moved in, and a class in that position has done the curriculum exactly right. What they can do is the thing the curriculum promised: they built it from what was on the ground, and they have checked it every week for a term. Say that plainly at the end. Do not manufacture an ending you have not got.

Block two needs one person who has not seen the hotel. A teacher from another room, the cook, a cleaner, an older child sent down for ten minutes. Ask on the day before, not on the day. If nobody can come, split your own group in two, send half round the corner for five minutes, and let the other half receive them as visitors, which works almost as well and takes no arranging at all.

The child you expect to run block one will not be the one who does it best. It is usually the child who has said least, because she has been watching the sequence for five weeks while everybody else was talking. Give her the first turn and give her no warning, and let the rest of the group be quiet for the whole of it.

How we work at the hotel

One adult stays with the group for the whole session. Sticks, bark and stones are carried with two hands, held low, one piece at a time, walking.
Hands are washed with soap after every session at the hotel, every time, whether a child handled materials or only watched.
Nothing living is ever touched, moved, picked up or poked, with a finger or with a stick. We look, and we leave it exactly where it is.
If anything appears that is not on a layer card, everyone stops, moves back one full step and touches nothing. The adult deals with it alone and the group carries on somewhere else.
The hotel is never taken apart to see inside. We look into the gaps that are already there.
Every piece used is bigger than a child's fist or longer than a child's hand. Anything smaller goes back on the ground.
Sticks with a broken point and bark with a split edge go back on the ground. We use the blunt pieces.
A child who does not want to touch anything stands with the group and looks. She is not asked a second time and she is not moved to the edge.

At the hotel

On Your Own, In Front of Everybody · 25 minutes

AIM: Carry out all three steps alone while the rest of the group watches in silence.

Sit the group in a line one step back and tell them their job is to say nothing at all. Then send one child forward. No instructions, no reminders, no first step named. Stand behind the line rather than beside her.

She steps back and looks, she kneels and works up from the stones, she says one thing. When she finishes, the group does not clap and you do not praise it. You say the next name. Six or seven children will get a turn and the rest go in block two, and the quiet is what makes it possible for the quiet ones to do it.

Where a child stalls, wait longer than is comfortable before you help, and when you do help, name only the step she is on.

SAY: "Your turn. All three steps. We are watching and nobody is going to help you."

Showing Somebody Who Has Never Seen It · 25 minutes

AIM: Take a person who has never seen the hotel to it and show them how the check is done.

Bring the visitor to the line and hand them over. The children decide who speaks. Your only job now is to stand back far enough that the visitor stops looking at you, which takes about four steps and is the whole of your contribution to this block.

What a child says first tells you what the term taught her. Most of them lead with the rule rather than the hotel: you cannot touch it, we do not open it, hands go behind your back. Let that stand as the introduction. Then somebody kneels and takes the visitor up through the layers from the stones, and somebody else fetches a card when the visitor asks a question nobody can answer.

Say the rule to the visitor as well, and let a child say it if one offers: anything nobody expected and everybody stops, steps back and touches nothing, and it is yours to deal with.

End the term standing back from it with the visitor still there. Say out loud what the class found across ten weeks, whatever that is, including nothing. Then say when the next check is and who is doing it.

SAY: "Show them where to stand. Tell them the one rule. Then let them look."

If you have more time

Let the visitor try the three steps while the children watch and correct nothing, eight minutes.
Walk the visitor back to the door along the route the class takes every week and let a child lead.

One thing for home

The children ran the check on their own today and showed somebody else how to do it. Ask your child to teach you the three steps. If you are asked why this is worth doing: she built it, she has checked it every week for ten weeks, and today she taught it to somebody else.

How you know it is working

A child tells the visitor the touching rule before the visitor gets near enough to break it. Somebody goes for a card rather than guessing at an answer. The group stays quiet through a long pause while one child works out which layer comes next.

Notes: