Birds need our help! Here’s a craft with easy steps for kids who want to help our animal friends.
There’s never a wrong time to be a bird advocate. Bird feeding is most helpful when birds need the most energy – think during temperature extremes, migration, and in late winter or early spring. With this fun craft using recyclable items, you’re not only helping the birds, but also helping the environment. The tube will decompose and help the soil, and the birds will eat the food and use the string for a spring nest.
What you need:
• Cardboard tube of any length
• Two to three-foot piece of yarn or string
• Shortening or peanut butter (depending on allergies)
• Popsicle stick or child-safe plastic knife
• Birdseed
• Sharp pencil
• Two thin twigs
• Newspaper
What you do:
1. Carefully push the pencil through the tube to make two holes on either side of one end. You might ask an adult for help with this step.
2. Pull the string through the holes (use the pencil to push the yarn through) and tie the ends together.
3. Make four holes on the opposite end of the tube – one on each side. Ask an adult for help if necessary.
4. Use your spreader to cover the tube with shortening or peanut butter.
5. Roll the tube in seed.
6. Push the small twig through two opposite holes.
7. Do the same thing with the second twig. This gives the birds somewhere to perch.
8. Empty the birdseed from your newspaper outside. The birds will eat it up!
9. Hang your bird feeder on a tree branch.
Keep watch to see how much birds appreciate it!
