Today is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, a man popularly known for his love of animals. So it seemed like a good day to do something special for our animal friends who need food for the winter by creating an easy, popsicle-stick bird feeder.
I had the girls put a piece of paper under their workspace to keep the glue off the table. I showed them how to lay out the popsicle sticks and gave them each a glue bottle. From there, they did most of this craft themselves (easy peasy lemon squeezy!).
For the base, we placed two craft sticks parallel to each other and then began laying other craft sticks across them. This made a square bottom, as long and as wide as the craft sticks, for the bird feeder.
As soon as she saw what Sunshine and Lily were doing, Jade wanted to do it too. I did the gluing for her, but she was able to put the sticks on. Actually, she was putting sticks on almost faster than I could glue. Her requests for “more doo pease” made me smile and she chattered excitedly about her “bird feeder.”
Once we had the base built, the girls began gluing the walls by placing a dot of glue in each corner of the frame and then alternating between placing craft sticks horizontally and vertically.
Here, because the glue was liquid, we had to be careful that the bird feeder stayed square and straight. Lily had problems with her sticks sliding off the corners and I had to help her straighten them up. I suppose a hot glue gun might also work for this project, but would be less safe for the kids.
Once the girls’ birdfeeders were as tall as we wanted them to be, we put another piece of paper on top of them and then put a heavy book carefully on each bird feeder. Some of the craft sticks were warped or crooked and the glue seemed to add to this, so I wanted to make sure the bird feeders would dry square. The book kept them all squished down and straight while the glue dried.
This is where it was hard to get the girls to wait for the glue to dry… so we ended up starting on some other little projects with wood pieces and glue, since they were having fun with the crafting. Stay tuned for more about that!
Once the bird feeders were all dry, I tied string to each of the corners and then knotted it at the top to hang it over a hook outside a window. Add bird seed according to the tastes of your local birds and enjoy watching them visit this winter!
Supplies needed (affiliate links):
Cost: $5
Difficulty: easy (suitable for ages 2-7)
I’m linking up with Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do for this post.
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