The Activity:
You can extend kindness beyond just humans! With stuffed animals and animal characters in children’s books, kids are inherently inclined to be empathic towards the natural world.
Before today’s activity, talk to your kids about their impact on the environment and animals. If they’re younger, you can start with visible impacts like how animals can eat litter and get sick. For older kids, talking about wider environmental issues like climate change or water pollution will probably be more engaging.
Then, do an activity that shows kindness to animals. One of our favorites is making homemade feeders for the birds.
Materials:
Pinecones
Peanut butter
Birdseed
String
Tie a string around the pine cone in a loop, so you can hang the pinecone from a tree branch or fence post. You will probably need to tuck it under the scales. Use a knife to coat the pinecone in peanut butter. Use enough so that the birdseed will thoroughly stick to it. Roll the pinecone in birdseed. Hang the pinecone in a tree or a bush where birds are likely to see it. Wait for the birds to show up! It may take a few days, but it will be gone quickly once they do.
Alternative activities include picking up garbage on a nature walk or setting up composting in your yard.
Our Experience:
My older son had done this activity before, so this time my husband decided to get creative. (Of course.)
They decided to make “Christmas cookies” for the birds. Instead of using pinecones as a base, they combined peanut butter, Crisco, and bird seed. They then pressed the mixture into cookie cutters to make adorable, Pinteresty shapes. Because the “cookies” were pretty mushy, my husband placed them in the refrigerator to cool. Even after solidifying overnight, they were still too soft to hang without falling apart. Instead of putting them on strings, they placed them around the yard. The birds – or maybe the squirrels – didn’t seem to mind.
To quote my husband, my four-year-old “had a blast” with this activity. Even though the logistics weren’t exactly right, he enjoyed the thought of Christmas cookies for the birds. The idea of giving them a gift for the holidays was a great way to have him think beyond what he was getting on Christmas morning!
My dad would make a feeder like this every winter, though he used suet. It is the only thing I had ever seen or heard of suet used for until I read a cookbook from the ’40s and was duly scandalized to learn that it was an actual people-foodstuff.
I can definitely see using suet for this! It’s super messy though. There’s a great bit in the book All the BIrds in the Sky where one of the main characters is a bird and eats suet. She then turns back into a human and realizes how utterly disgusting it was!