Help Birds in Winter with Birdseed Ornaments

Making birdseed ornaments and peanut butter pinecones are classic winter crafts that help the wildlife that visits your yard or school.

This tutorial from Fireflies and Mudpies is super simple to follow, only has three ingredients, and doesn’t include corn syrup, which isn’t good for birds. You can use a variety of seeds for these to attract different birds to your yard.

While you’re making crafts for wildlife, check out this idea for making wreaths for birds and other critters. The link in the post doesn’t work anymore, but you can kind of get the idea from the photo. Use flexible vines to make the wreath, build it up with leaves, moss or small sticks, and use peanut butter and bird seed to make it into a feeder.

And if you want to make some bird crafts while making crafts for birds, why not make some craft stick birds? Or maybe some birds with nests made out of pine needles. And while you’re out gathering natural materials, you can build your own bird nests, too.

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Candy Corn Math Activities

I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

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