Craft Things To Make: Bird Nests

We were walking outside in our backyard and Rory noticed all of the pinecones and sticks that had accumulated on the ground.  She immediately begin picking them up, throwing them, and kicking them.

I tried to think of craft things to make with these great items from nature.  I decided to combine Rory’s two favorite things: nature and animals.

We are making bird nests with birds!

Materials Needed to Make Bird Nests and Birds:

• Long and short sticks
• Pinecones, whatever sizes you choose
• googly eyes
• hot glue or craft glue
• scraps of yellow felt or fabric

It was really nice that we had so many of the supplies already laying around in our house.  I chose to use hot glue, however, you can probably use craft glue.  Although, this project was a lot of fun for us, I quickly learned that this activity may not be completely suited for toddlers!  Older children have more patience, and can wait for the glue to dry; Rory, on the other hand, frequently pulled the nest apart and wanted to rip all the feathers off the pinecone birds.

The first thing we did was go outside on our nature hike!  We picked up several different sizes of sticks and a few pinecones.  After we came inside and played with our findings, we decided to make some birds.  To make the birds we took the pinecones and I glued some feathers on on the backside for tails.  (Rory enjoyed pulling the tails off the birds so we had to re-glue them several times!)  On the front of the pinecones, we added a few wobbly eyes a little square piece of felt for a beak and the birds were finished.

It was then time to make the bird nests.  For this, we placed some of the larger sticks in almost a triangle shape for a good foundation for our other pinecones.  I placed the pinecones in the middle of the nest to make sure that they could sit “comfortably” in the nest.  Make sure the pinecone birds do not fall out of the nest and that they can kind of “sit” in the nest.

Like I mentioned above, I used hot glue for making the nest.  Once I had a good foundation for the pine cones, I just kept gluing sticks to make the nest.Just remember to leave a small opening in the middle for the pinecones to sit.  When the nest was assembled, I glued the pinecones into the nest.

I added a little cotton ball for an “egg” with the nest.  We had such a fun time collecting supplies for this project and it looks really cute on display!  Although it was tough gluing with a toddler, the end result was worth it!

Hope you enjoy the bird nests!

The Quirky Mommas would love for you to check out some of their other great nature craft ideas:

• Butterfly Collage
• Pinecone Birdfeeder
• Nature Collage