Last December E. made some bird feeders at her one-day winter camp. She loved the idea of feeding the birds when they have real difficulty in getting any food during winter so much we needed to make some more.
The first bird feeder idea came from our Helen Doron school.
PINECONE+PEANUT BUTTER BIRD FEEDER
What you need:
- pine cones (you can buy them but easier to collect your own)
- peanut butter (of any kind)
- seeds (you can buy canary food in a pet shop, but we mixed our own: corn, sunflower seeds, millets, smashed walnut, sultanas, dried cranberries)
- knife
- thread
- bowl
How to make it:
- Mix the seeds, dried fruit, nuts in a bowl
- Spread the peanut butter with the knife between the scales of the cone
- Roll the cone into the seed bowl
- Tie a string or thread so you can hang it up on bushes or trees
- Go to your garden, balcony or, as we did it, into a park nearby and hang out your bird feeders
We went back to check on the bird feeder and seeing the seeds and the peanut butter disappear gave E. tremendous joy.
We made the pinecones with our native nanny, N, in English. We spread them around E.’s kindergarten area with I.-Grandma in Hungarian. When we went back to check them we were in English again. So we covered a lot of vocabulary in both languages. (bird feeder, seeds, corn, hang out, hide, quiet-busy, visible, don’t migrate, robin, blackbird, finch etc.)
TANGERINE RIND BIRD FEEDER
What you need:
The same as above except for the pine cone and the thread. After pressing some orange/tangerine juice for the girls I kept the rind. Quite a lot of seed mixture remained from the previous bird feeder project so we used it.
How to make it:
- Take the pressed out tangerine (or orange) rind and line it with peanut butter.
- Sprinkle the seed mixture in it
- Place it on and under bushes or just in your patio or on your balcony.
- Return to check how fast the seeds are eaten up.
In the second case again we made the little feeders in English and the next day we went out into the snow to play (we were in Hungarian) and put out the tangerine bird feeders.
It’s a lovely winter project even with little kids and you can save the tiny song birds that do not migrate in the long, cold winter. Through this topic you can build your children empathy and teach them how to take care of nature and its creatures.
Non-native Mommy 