Unplugged Food

This week's Unplugged Project theme was food. I had thought about cooking and/or planting with Paige - I have a really cute kid's tomato planting kit for her - but life has been a little stressful with all of this house hunting, and I actually wasn't sure at one point if I'd have a chance to do the project this week. So we fit in a simple project, and wouldn't you know it, simple is often best. Inspired by this post we made Cheerios bird feeders.

This is a really simple project, basically all you do is string Cheerios onto a pipe cleaner. Bend the top of the pipe cleaner to make a hook, and then go hang it on a tree. I asked Paige if she'd like to make something for the birds and she was very excited - Paige has always loved birds. She really seemed to enjoy putting the Cheerios on the pipe cleaner, and had more success with it than I thought she would. Of course a pipe cleaner is a little easier for a "threading" type project than string is, because it is more rigid, and she just had to place a Cheerio over the pipe cleaner. It was also a good project for hand-eye coordination. Paige also enjoyed picking out what color pipe cleaner she should use - and assigning a color for me too.

We made them at night and then took them out to hang up the next morning. Paige quickly put them on the tree in our front yard, turned and looked at me and said, "where are the birds?" I guess they should just know that there's a yummy Cheerio breakfast waiting - and that they might be able to lower their cholesterol in six weeks!

The additional benefit to this project was nibbling on the Cheerios as you go along.

Here are our feeders, hung of course, at toddler height.