When I first saw the idea for a bird feeder made with pipe cleaners and Cheerios (found here), I thought it would be a fun and easy activity. I’m always looking for new activities for Buddy using materials I already have at home. Last weekend, Buddy and I made one together.
I decided to do this activity after snack time to minimize Buddy’s desire to eat all of the Cheerios. Unfortunately, I learned that Buddy always has room for Cheerios! When I asked Buddy, he said he wanted to make a bird feeder. However, it turns out that he was more interested in eating. For every Cheerio that was put on the pipe cleaner, he ate three full handfuls! Buddy did enjoy putting the Cheerios on the pipe cleaner, but once the rest were gone, he was upset that he couldn’t eat them off the pipe cleaner.
Buddy was excited to see the pipe cleaners.
Yummy Cheerios!
Buddy needed a little help to keep the pipe cleaner still enough to put on the Cheerio.
When all of the Cheerios were gone, I made the pipe cleaner into a circle and hung it on a tree in our backyard. I haven’t noticed any birds on it yet, but there aren’t too many birds around right now. We might have to try this one again when it’s a little warmer, and when Buddy learns a little more self control around Cheerios.
Although the bird feeder activity didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped, we found other fun things to do with pipe cleaners this week. Buddy had a lot of fun making pipe cleaner bracelets, putting them on, and taking them off.
We also played with the pipe cleaners and a colander like we did in this blog post. Buddy loves counting right now, so we counted pipe cleaners as we put them in and out of the colander. We also talked about colors of pipe cleaners. I asked him to find a certain color of pipe cleaner, and he tried pull it out of the top of the colander. (He knows red and orange, but he needs help with other colors.) It was a fun variation on the activity that we’ve done before.
Overall, we’ve had a lot of fun this week with our different pipe cleaner activities. (And I’ve also learned that Buddy’s not quite ready for food related crafts!) I’ve put them away for now, but I’ll definitely pull them out again the next time I need a good distraction for Buddy.
