Get your kids excited about nature with this easy to make humming bird feeder! All you need is an empty milk carton, sugar, water and some twine to create a fun bird feeder. Join our sponsor, Tree Top, in encouraging kids to learn about gardening and food.
Growing up in Michigan, my dad had a bird feeder in our side yard just outside a window to our kitchen. He also had a bird book and we’d take great pride in spying a new bird and finding it on the book. To this day I love bird watching and finding new species to learn about. Living now in Las Vegas, we have many humming birds darting around our neighborhood. For years I’ve wanted to get a feeder so we could watch them closer. We’ve recently noticed a little guy around looking for food so I decide it was time to make a humming bird feeder of our own.
I headed over to KidsGardening.org to find some kid friendly information on bird feeding. While we were on the site the kids and I dug around a little reading about gardening and growing food. My kids are very cognizant of where their food comes from because they love grapes and I won’t buy grapes unless they were grown in the U.S. When grapes aren’t in season they are usually from another country. My kids check the packages every time we go to the store to see if we can get grapes.
I am passionate about teaching my kids where their food comes from. I love that Tree Top, the maker of apple sauce, is teaming up with KidsGardening.org to help kids fund community garden projects and teach kids about growing food. Through their Raising Good Apples campaign, Tree Top is donating a dollar to KidsGardening.org for every purchase of Tree Top Apple Sauce Pouches. In fact, Tree Top is a grower owned co-op located in Washington and I love knowing their apples are raised right nearby where we live.
The instructions on KidsGardening.org are for a standard bird feeder. I adjusted our feeder for humming birds that eat sugar water. I chose a milk carton with red on it since humming birds are supposed to be attracted to red. I cut the triangles about 3″ up from the bottom to allow room for the liquid humming bird food. I also skipped putting in the dowels as humming birds don’t perch to eat.
I used the hole punch to put a hole in the top for hanging, but the milk carton gets pretty heavy. I used yarn to string it up and wasn’t really sure how long that’d stay put. I’d definitely recommend sturdy twine instead.
To make humming bird food, we basically made a simple syrup mixture. Just dissolve the same amounts of sugar as you have water ( 1 cup sugar to 1 cup water; 2 cups sugar to 2 cups water; etc). Our carton took 3 cups of the sugar water mixture to fill it.
After we hung our humming bird feeder outside on a tree, we headed back inside for a well deserved Tree Top applesauce snack. We kept our eyes out all day for a humming bird, but with about 10 kids tearing around outside playing tag and riding bikes, I wasn’t sure we’d see him. I’ll keep an eye out for him on a quieter day when the kids are at school, which is when I usually spot him flitting about.
How do you keep your kids excited about nature and gardening? I’d to love hear your tips – and even see photos of your gardens – in the comments!
Enter below to win a gardening set!
The giveaway will be open from April 7, 2015 to May 15, 2015 at midnight PST and will be sponsored by Sway Group. Forty winners will be selected to receive a gardening set valued at $60. Sway Group will select the winners on or about May 18, 2015 and will follow up with the prizewinners.
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Tree Top.
Hi, did it work? Did you get any hummingbirds to come to your feeder? I work at a school and was going to try to adapt this to the smaill milk cartons the students get with their lunch trays. Thanks for this information!
It did! That said, we have a lot of hummingbirds around. So I’m not sure if the feeder attracted them or if they just happened on it. 🙂