Children love building cubbies. Pulling all the cushions off the couch and draping sheets and towels over furniture, creating their own space.

Building cubbies outdoors creates a different sense of excitement about it as you are left to the elements. Building cubbies outdoors also means you have a bigger space to play in and that you need to find materials from nature to build your cubby.

The Australian bush offers a lot of interesting places to build a cubby.

Choosing a site:

• - you can choose your backgarden, a local park or venture even further into nature parks and reserves
• - choose a site where there is plenty of dead wood that you can use - its best not to pull and break off any branches - we are lucky in Australia because the indigenous trees often drop their branches and bark - so there should be plenty of logs and wood lying on the ground which you can use.
• - try to find a place where the ground is relatively bare as you do not want to distrurb some creatures home or stamp on some plants.
• - avoid places which can get wet quite easily if it rains
• - finding a natural feature which you can use as a starting point is always good - like a fallen big trunk or a big branch jutting out from a tree.

Building your bush cubbie

• - Its best to start with constructing the big frame which you will place other logs and branches on. This is best done with an adult or older sibling/family member. Its important your base structure is strong and reliable.
• - Collect long branches and tie them together of rest them together - the one we constructed we were able to just rest the logs on the branch.
• - gather long logs and place them next to each other to create the covering
• - you can then gather smaller branches of leaves to place over the logs adn bracnhes to create even more cover
• - you can even weave smaller sticks and twigs through the frame
• - and you can finish with moss and bark adn bigger leaves - depending on what is around you in the bush

The finishing touches

- you can make a little path and doorway

- if you like you can clear out the ground inside your cubby and add little stools and chairs made of logs and rocks

- why not build a soft place to rest with leaf litter

- some bush flowers might be nice

Then once you have built your shelter, let your imagination run free!

Create a fantasy world filled with unusual creatures, you are on a farm in a faraway land - You are a knight in a Kings army - surviving in the wilderness - you are a runaway.