Smart Summer: Feeding the birds

We didn't get nearly enough of our activities finished for Forest Friendly Week due to a last minute trip out of town to visit family but we had a great time on our trip so it was worth it.

We did manage to make some homemade bird feeders before we left though. We followed along with this post over at Alpha Mom but used the recipe that she mentioned in the comments. I was worried about them not sticking well enough so we picked the recipe that used less water just to give ours a better chance.



You can see that you don't need many ingredients for this easy project.


We used a variety of different cookie cutters for our feeders. The larger cookie cutters without much design did better than the more intricate designs. The leaf didn't not fare well at all but honestly we should probably have let them sit quite a while longer or put them in the freezer to speed up the drying process.


We still ended up with several to hang so it wasn't a total wash, thankfully.


To fill the time while we were waiting for our birdseed ornaments to harden we decided to make a different type of feeder. I pulled out some pipe cleaners and Cheerios and put the girls to work.




Just have the kids string the Cheerios onto the pipe cleaners and they can bend them into any shape they please. Easy peasy. Even my littlest girl thought this was a great activity.


Though I don't think she realized they were to feed the birds and not her. This might not be a bad snack idea afterall. Ha!

There are tons of homemade bird feeder ideas all over the web that you could try. I have this popsicle stick feeder and this orange peel feeder bookmarked for us to use this fall.