Treehugger Babysitting: Episode 3- Best Birdfeeders Ever

These birds are actually angry
because you haven't made them a
milk carton bird feeder.

Hi everyone! This is GEEKs cofounder Katie M-T, bringing you the long-awaited third episode of our captivating and ingenious new series, Treehugger Babysitting. These episodes follow my adventures in trying out sneaky environmental education activities on the kids I nanny. Read through this whole post to find out how to use a milk carton, glue and some old magazines to inspire a love of environmental stewardship and creative recycling in young children, or skip to the bottom for a summary of what I learned as well as a picture of Barney the Dinosaur.

The Project, and Why I Love This Blog

This guy approves of the milk
carton bird feeder project.

Since my first environmental education art project was so successful (check out the story here), I knew the kids would be happy with another craft project. For ideas, I went straight to the Resources Page of the GEEKs blog (yes, that's this blog!), since I knew that it would be incredibly classy, helpful and well-written. 

After looking through a Wisconsin DNR website linked on the page, I found instructions for making a milk carton bird feeder. You can check out the full instructions here.

Our version of the project involved cutting holes in milk cartons and filling them with bird feed. As an extra step that the kids loved, we also pasted pictures from old magazines onto the cartons. No, the magazine cutouts were not waterproof. No, I did not think about that beforehand. 

But yes, the cartons did look quite cool. And yes, the kids really liked the project and thought I was an awesome babysitter.

The sneaky education ninjas
strike again

Sneaky Recycling Education

This project was effective in sneaky education in several ways. 

First of all, the birds- it was great to see the kids actually interested in watching the birds in their backyard. But we also learned a lot while the kids were glueing on their magazine pictures. We talked about all the other ways that old magazines and milk cartons could be used, with the most exciting idea being making a small, collaged trash can (oh, the irony!). We also came to the conclusion together that even though it's great to put things like paper and plastic in the recycling bin, it's even better to use them again in the form they're already in. 

What I Learned

Barney also thrives on the power of
kids' imaginations, but I'm much less
terrifying.

When I first thought of a milk carton bird feeder, it didn't seem like an epic tool for doing any environmental education stuff beyond the classic idea of "Recycling is good!" and "Birds are good!". But as usual, I underestimated the power of the classic idea of kids' imaginations. The kids definitely gained a new appreciation of birds and crafty recycling. But beyond that, I saw them taking their own initiative through the project: they wanted to save their own milk cartons to use them for projects of their own invention; they kept thinking up other ways to make bird feeders; and they wanted to experiment with other things birds might eat. A simple, cliched craft project led the kids to environmentalism project ideas that were driven by them, not me. 

I think there's some quote about how the best thing a teacher can do is work herself out of a job, and it's definitely true. Except not quite, because I definitely still need the nannying job.

Thanks for reading! If you have a Treehugger Babysitting story you'd like to share, email us at get.geeky@gmail.com, or leave us a post or message at our Facebook page here. Check back soon for the next  action-packed episode of "Treehugger Babysitting"!