bird snacks

We have bird feeders in various places in our yard.  We get a lot of birds because we have woods behind our house.  M always checks out the birds in the morning at the bird feeder outside our living room window.  We have some kind of Japanese(?) tree right outside and the birds seem to love it there. M loves filling the bird feeders with his Papa.  He also enjoys yelling at the squirrels.  

I This morning we were talking about the snow storm that's coming this weekend and how the birds would have trouble finding food under the snow.  I found this activity during a middle-of-the-night playtime feeding with G and I loved it.  A lot of times when I find an idea on a blog I'll then Google it because chances are it's on twenty other blogs and might have different variations.  Most of the first versions of this that I found called for using unflavored gelatin.  Call me weird but giving birds jello seemed odd.  We used honey and bird food.  Seems more natural to me.

We started with a bowl full of birdseed that M enjoyed playing with for a few minutes before we started (sensory).  I didn't measure anything so I can't really tell you how much we used.  I'd guess we had about two cups of birdseed.  I eyeballed adding in the honey.  I was really trying to get a sticky consistency like play-doh but I think we ended up with a bit too much honey.  Then we spread it out and used a cookie cutter....

Our mixture was a little too soggy so what ended up working best for us was filling the cookie cutter instead of actually cutting a shape.  One we did that it held its shape fine.  We put them on wax paper and use a wooden skewer to make holes for string (which are difficult to see here).  

They're currently freezing in the freezer.  Either this afternoon or tomorrow morning we will string them and hang them from our Japanese tree.  Photos to come...