Pipe Cleaner Bird Feeders

Welcome to the tutorial for the easiest craft ever! This requires pretty much no brains to get your kid set up and going, but the lovely thing is, once they’re going, they may stay on this one for a while. Basically, what I’m trying to tell you is that this is the perfect craft for the sleep-deprived mom – not that I’d know anything about that. Nope. My kids always sleep. They never demand things at 3 am…

Anyway, you only need two things for this craft: pipe cleaners and a cereal you can string, like Froot Loops, Cheerios, or Apple Jacks.

And now for the tutorial – you literally just string the cereal on the pipe cleaner. When you fill up the pipe cleaner, twist the ends together. If you like, you can push cereal over the twisted up ends to hide them, or just leave them as they are. You can also form the pipe cleaner into fun shapes, like hearts, circles, triangles, or squares. Make a longer feeder by looping several pipe cleaners together, or just hang one from a tree.

In essence, this is also the perfect toddler project. It includes fine motor skills (stringing, twisting), colors (the pipe cleaner, Froot Loops, if you use them), and shapes. We used this project first in Mommy School when we were studying the letter C (for cereal). This is one of the most successful project to date, and I still whip it out when the rain starts falling. It’s a great one to have tucked in your back pocket for those sorts of days.