Ooey Gooey Father's Day Present

This evening, I helped my kids and a few neighbors make a very gooey Father's Day present.  With my son being a Cub Scout and my daughter going into Girl Scouts, it also occurred to me that this would be an excellent scouting project.  In fact, it satisfies Tiger Cub Scout Elective 32 and Wolf Cub Scout Achievement 5E that I'm aware of.  I'm sure that it satisfies electives for other levels as well.

We made bird feeders out of pine cones and toilet paper rolls.  I learned by trial-and-error that putting the string on both made for much easier work later.  Next time, I may even try putting dried or fresh pieces of fruit on there.  I don't believe that my kids have ever done this craft and I hadn't made one since I was about their age.

I prefer crunchy peanut butter to eat, but thought that creamy peanut butter would be a better option for this project.  It will also be interesting to see which one that the birds prefer.  I have seen these made with toilet paper rolls and thought that we'd try it out.

My favorite part of this activity was that the only thing that I had to buy was the bird seed.  I had the:  peanut butter, toilet paper rolls, pine cones, yarn, and hole puncher already.  In fact, I got the pine cones at my daughter's last WIC appointment.  We don't have pine trees that have these big pine cones in my neighborhood.  I got some funny looks as we were leaving the appointment and picked up an armful to put in the car, but oh well, I knew that it would make a good project eventually.  I'd been saving up toilet paper rolls ever since I decided to become a Girl Scout leader, as well, for future projects.

I hope that the dads and grandpas will enjoy their gooey presents!

- Vanessa