Easy-To-Make Wild Bird Feeder

Kids love to learn about nature and a fun way to encourage them to help care for wild birds is to make a simple bird feeder. Bird watching and feeding is a great way to teach your little ones about the many varieties of birds and their habits. Watching the birds bring their friends to this fresh tasty treat is a reward for the kids, as well as, the birds.

Explain to your child that supplementing the food supply of our feathery friends is very important, especially during harsh winter conditions, to help guarantee their survival. Also, please remember that once birds start coming to your home to eat, they get used to the food being there so it’s important to keep feeding them throughout the winter months.

An easy-to-make pinecone feeder is a simple project that even young children can help create. All you need is a pine cone, string, and the food items you will use.


STEP 1: Assemble your materials.

STEP 2: Tie a string around the wider, stem end of the pinecone. Be sure the string is tied tightly so it doesn't fall when the birds arrive.

STEP 3: Mix ½ cup vegetable shortening with ½ cup oatmeal or corn meal in a mixing bowl until well blended. This amount should cover one large pinecone or two or three smaller ones.

STEP 4: Thoroughly spread the mixture over the pinecone with a child friendly knife/spreader or use the back side of a spoon. This is rather messy, so have paper towels handy for hand clean-up.

STEP 5: Pour the birdseed into a pie tin, paper plate or cookie sheet. Roll the pinecone in the birdseed until well covered.

STEP 6: Suspend the feeder from a tree branch where it can be easily seen from a window. Last, but not least, all you need to do is watch for your feathered friends to come and enjoy the meal you lovingly prepared for them!

Thanks to Nancy Keesling of TutuCuteandMoore for sharing this fun project with us.  You can find Nancy on Etsy, where she sells unique handmade clothing and and gifts.  You can also follow Nancy on facebook.

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Urban Farming: Involving the Children

Sarah, of ThatsAWrapBaby, has been sharing a short series of posts on her blog Three Little Monkey's on Urban Farming.  Today she shares of one of the projects in her series.  You can visit her blog (see her May 2012 posts) for other projects in the series.  

The kids and I set about creating a tiered herb garden yesterday afternoon. This project was inspired by one in the book The Ultimate Step-by-Step Kid's First Gardening Book. The book is fabulous and brimming with wonderful, kid friendly gardening ideas.

This project is perfect for kids of all ages. I had an 8 year old, 5 year old, and 4 year old helping, plus a 2 year old watching on. We modified the plans a bit to accomidate our meager budget! Instead of pretty terra cotta pots of varying sizes, I found some plastic and metal pots in the dollar bins at Target (small, medium, and large. Make sure they'll nest). They aren't as pretty, but they'll serve our purpose well. I am also banking on the herbs growing large and hiding the pots a bit.

First things first, make sure you have the right tools gathered. We had our three nesting pots, a bag of soil, a trowel, some seeds, and a few small herbs. We chose basil, thyme, lemon balm, chamomile, and curly parsley. There is a bit room for more, but that's what we had. Steer clear of mint, as it grows rampant and will take over your pots! Have fun choosing your favorite herbs or try new varieties. There are so many to choose from.

After we gathered our tools, we set the medium sized pot inside the largest pot and filled in all around with potting soil. We had a few herbs that were already a bit large, but mostly we had seeds (trying to be economical!!). We planted a couple types of seeds and a couple larger plants in this bottom tier. 

We filled in a bit more and then set the smallest pot into the middle one and filled in around it. We planted a few more herbs in our middle pot.

We then filled the top pot with soil and planted a lovely bit of curly parsley to crown our herb garden.

This fun project was quick and easy! It was perfect for including all of the children and gave them a real sense of ownership in our garden. 

 Try this project with your own little ones! Keep it in a sunny place and let them water it each day. Very soon, their own herbs will be gracing the kitchen!

We would LOVE to have you join in the conversation with comments or links to your own adventures in Urban Farming!

Sarah can be found on Facebook, at her Blog, and on Etsy at her shop ThatsAWrapBaby:

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Bring the Outdoors In: Beautiful Things - Collecting and Sorting

By Christine of Belly Bear Baby Gear

Items found in nature contain such beauty, and children seem to be particularly attuned to this beauty. With only a few simple items, you can encourage your children to participate in this fun and educational nature based activity.

All you will need is a paper bag (or other collecting vessel), an empty egg carton and the great outdoors!

Begin by giving your child a paper bag and bringing them outside. A walk in the woods would provide for some great diverse items for collection, but as you will see, your own back yard will do just fine.

If you are working with young children, you may need to show them what to do by placing a few items in their bag for them. Encourage them to collect as many small three dimensional items as they'd like.

Sean was particularly drawn to this patch of grass and rocks in our yard. He discovered big and little rocks as well as a few left over acorn caps. As your child collects more items, this is an opportunity for you to build their nature vocabulary by naming and labeling what they are collecting.

Once your bags are nice and full bring them inside and pour the contents into the top portion of your egg carton.

Sit back for a moment and enjoy the spoils of all your hard work. Allow your child to study the items and consider how they may be sorted.

Young toddlers will simply enjoy exploring the items and filling the cups in the egg carton at random. You can begin encouraging them to notice the similarities and differences by explaining "Let's put all the rocks together" or "Look at all the pink petals".

When working with older children you can encourage more advanced sorting skills. Allow them to study what they have collected and decide how they will sort the beautiful things they have found. They may decide to sort by color placing all the brown things and pink things together, or they may decide sorting by type of object makes the most sense for them.

This activity will encourage your child to begin developing their mathematical thinking skills such as sorting objects varying by one or two attributes all the while enjoying the natural objects they collected. Take a moment to enjoy the beauty found outside with your children and help foster the next generation of nature lovers.

Christine can be found online on her blog Belly Bear Baby Gear, facebook, and her etsy shop:

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Ice Cube Painting

By Cori of Peace, Baby! Batiks

My son really likes to paint, so I’m always looking for different methods of painting. I don’t always want to get into the messiness of finger painting – especially indoors -- and water colors aren’t always as much fun as the bright colors of poster paint.

I saw ice painting demonstrated one day while we were watching Sprout, and I was intrigued. I modified our activity a bit from the directions posted online, using watercolor paper instead of paper towels and cardstock. I like the heaviness of watercolor paper; it can take a lot of paint!

The night before you want to paint, prepare your ice cubes. Put a little poster paint in the bottom of the cubes of an ice cube tray. Fill with water and mix well. Add half of a craft stick to make a handle. Pop into the freezer and let them set overnight. We’ve had success with solid colors as well as glitter paints.

When you’re ready to paint, take the ice cube tray out of the freezer and let them sit for a few minutes before trying to get them out of the tray.

Pull the cubes out, give each kid a piece of watercolor paper, and let them go! First, the kids rubbed the cubes on the paper.

When they were fresh from the freezer the colors were lighter.

Then, as the cubes thawed, the color went on thicker and darker.

Then, the boys discovered pieces of the ice cubes fell off if you hit them on the paper or pressed them like a stamp. By the end, we had soaking wet, colorful pieces of art!

Variation: In honor of Earth day, I made green, blue, white, and silver glitter (just for fun!) paint cubes and cut our watercolor paper into circles.

My son discovered it was fun to paint his hand and then stamp it onto the paper.

My son told me his painting shows Earth right after it was formed. (He’s a bit of a space and planet nut.) Mine shows Earth later in its developmen, or so he tells me. J

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