I’ve been saving a bunch of our empty toilet paper rolls for craft projects and just recently came across this one:  toilet paper roll birdfeeder -which became a squirrel feeder, to our enjoyment. It was really easy and I had everything I needed! My 9 year old was willing to help and it didn’t take much time; it also benefits our local wildlife (aka – the birds, chipmunks and squirrels in our yard).

I think this is a great way to get your kids to practice “spreading with a butter knife” too.  Preparing them to be able to spread their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a by-product of having fun. 🙂 

What you need:

• empty toilet paper rolls
• string or twine (I used kite string and twine we had on hand)
• scissors
• hole punch
• peanut butter (or sunflower butter for peanut allergies)
• birdseed
• plate & butter knife

Between the list above and the pictures below everything should be pretty self-explanatory.

Make sure you roll and pat the birdseed onto the peanut  (or sunflower) butter well to get it as coated as possible. If you’re child isn’t good at spreading you might want to help. Make sure you have enough peanut butter on there to hold the birdseed.

We hung ours in a various places outside.   The one hanging closest to the ground got the squirrels attention and brought us a a few episodes of squirrel-a-vision as you can see in these pictures.  Last I checked the paper rolls were still attached to the string but looked like they were probably cleaned of birdseed quite thoroughly. We’ll probably slather up some more tp-rolls with peanut butter roll in more seed so we can watch the squirrels again 🙂 .