Toddler Art Class: Cheery Bird Feeders

Alternate title for this class: Toddler Fine Motor Skills Class.

Art Project: Cheery Bird Feeders
Supplies:
Cheerios (or similar cereal)
pipe cleaners / chenille stems / fuzzy wires whatever you want to call them

Book:   Nest / Hurley, Jorey


 What Kids Do:  thread Cheerios onto the wires

sometimes with a little grown-up help

 (I loved how this young artist below was discovering that the Cheerio is difficult to thread onto the wire if you don't line the wire up with the hole part, but instead try to stick it through the cereal edge.)

Eat the Cheerios (of course!)

 In the two photos below, you can see the series of how he'd put the cereal onto the end of the wire, then eat the Cheerio to create what his mother deemed, "the world's most inconvenient spoon."

Played with the wires (the rigidity and springy-ness are very interesting!)

And formed them into interesting shapes (this one is the letter A!).

Some kids just liked to move the Cheerios from one container to another:

And then got very befuddled with this double-stacked conundrum (why can't I get these Cheerios out? I can see them! Hmmm...):

Hindsight Tip:  I was actually worried that this project would be too hard, too frustrating or possibly too boring, but it was actually a big hit!  Even those kids who dutifully strung a few Cheerios on and then promptly ate them off the wires had a great time! Next time, bring more than the dregs of our family's own box of Cheerios... these kids wanted to PACK the o's onto their wires!  Also, having enough that snacking on them was totally okay would have been nice.

Adult Challenge: Observe your child's demeanor (and respond accordingly to THAT instead of to the object that they're creating.  Are they frustrated? Bored? Thrilled? Proud? That emotion is way more important than whether they're doing the project "right.")