Bird Feeders

Over the past few winters we've taken Monkey (and Peanut when he joined the family) to feed the birds on some walking trails a couple of times. He always has a great time and asks when we can go again. 

Today we whipped up some bird feeders to hang out in the backyard and hopefully attract some birds to our window! 

Supplies: cardboard tubes, peanut butter, knife, Cheerios, bird seed, string, baking tray 

The first thing you need to do is cover the cardboard tubes with peanut butter. Monkey helped with this and it got all over our fingers and we couldn't stop laughing. We also go to lick a whole bunch of peanut butter off our fingers. 

Next, stick some Cheerios on. 

We didn't use too many because there should be lots of room for the bird seed too. 

Now the really messy part. Cover the rest of the peanut butter with bird seed. We sprinkled the bird seed using our hands while holding the tubes over the baking tray to try and catch as much of the excess as possible. I have to say, the baking tray did a better job than I thought. We still had to sweep afterwards though. 

If you did this activity outside you wouldn't have as much clean up. Alternatively, if you skipped the Cheerios you could pour the seed onto the tray and then roll the tube in the seed which would also cut down on the mess. 

The seeds didn't stick in the places where the peanut butter was really thin. 

Finally, put each tube on a loop of string. Then we hung them in the backyard. 

Fingers crossed we see some birds!

Mar