I went off to do the food shop at Morrisons for a change. I was really impressed at their efforts to reduce plastic waste when it comes to packing your own fruit and vegetables. All the bags are fully recyclable and they also do cardboard containers for you to collect your own eggs. As soon as we had finished with the egg container I knew exactly what we could make with them - feeders for our wildlife visitors.
Please make sure that you are aware of allergies before filling the bird feeders. If you are a school/nursery/childminder - you may have a no nut policy in place.
We are proud supporters of the RSPB. We carried on James Nan's membership when she sadly passed away. She was so passionate about birds and each week would put part of her shopping allowance aside to buy bird food. We knew how much it meant to her so 12 years ago James signed it over into his name and continued to support the charity with monthly donations.
I love how Neve prides herself on taking care of the wildlife. She makes an effort to learn about them, make sure the feeders are filled and she will pick litter up she sees and put it in the bin to stop them from getting hurt.
She was over the moon when I suggested making some more bird feeders for the garden.
So far we have enjoyed making -
I popped the invitation outside for the children on a lovely spring day. The paints, paint brushes were all available, laid out on the grass. They were straight over decorating the bottoms of their cartons using acrylic paints.
I did pop over to help hold them in place as they painted as they kept moving across the grass. I love how they didn't just stick to painting the ones in front of them - they helped to do all of them making this a real collaborative project.
We left them to dry in the Spring sunshine before adding holes and wool string to hang them up in the trees.
The children worked together to fill up the feeders using spoons and their hands. A little was spilled and I loved how once we were finish they worked together to collect the dropped seed and return it to the bag.
Lets take a look at this activity in action:
We went outside to hang them from the tree tops. We have the binoculars at the ready and so far we have seen a squirrel, pigeons, robins and blue tits checking the feeders out and eating from them.
Really simple to make. Very low cost, if any. Its a great way to get children talking about wildlife and ways we can pull together to help look after them.
We did add different bird seeds to the feeders, at Neves request. She wanted to do an experiment to see which seed would all go first. I thought it was an excellent idea. She went out of her way to run outside each day and check them too. How wonderful!
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