When my husband and I had our first child, we wanted to create some of our own family traditions around the holidays. This year we made biodegradable, edible ornaments for the animals to eat during the winter. It was so fun, I know we’ll do this every year!
Collect Your Materials
We started by gathering pinecones from around our property. You can also just use this time to choose the tree you’ll be decorating. If you’re in an urban environment or don’t have trees, you can also use a branch with lots of smaller branches on it. This first time out can also be spent animal watching to get the kids excited about decorating later.
Make Your Ornaments
I collected all of my ingredients the week before, so I wasn’t scrambling at the last second. Here are each of the decorations we made with a link to instructions:
Peanut Butter Pinecones
My tweaks: I used Organic peanut butter for this (I know, I know but that’s how I roll!).
Birdseed Orange Feeders
My tweaks: We made these the day before and threw them in the refrigerator.
Birdseed Ornaments
My tips: Here are the ornament forms I use. I replaced the corn syrup with honey in this recipe. I’ve read different views on using honey and gelatin to feed birds. It is incredibly cold here in Michigan, so I have less fear of mold and melting. Also, I use Great Lakes Grass Fed Beef Gelatin. However, if you are nervous about this one just leave it off the list. Or, you can make suet ornaments. 
Dehydrated Fruit
My tips: Skip the last step where the varnish is applied
Popcorn and Cranberry Garlands
These are are quite a pain if the kernels are small, and it’s not something you want to do with tiny little hands around. But when we switched to an all cranberry garland things got a lot easier.
It’s best not to use fishing line to hang any of these because birds can get tangled in them.
Read The Night Tree by Eve Bunting
This is one of my favorite childhood books, and I couldn’t believe how well it fit with this activity. It’s abou
t a family that decorates the same tree in the forest every year. They homemake and hang edible ornaments for the animals and share a cup of hot chocolate under the stars. Even though we didn’t decorate at night, this book still set the tone and scene perfectly! You can get it here.
Decorate Your Tree
And now comes the best part – mix up some healthy hot chocolate and get out there! Start with the garland first and then move on to the rest. Don’t worry too much about how perfectly the ornaments are hanging. Cora couldn’t reach that high, but we just moved a few up before we left.
Create a Closer Observation Point
The only bummer part about our tree was that we couldn’t see it from our house. It’s great for the animals because they can eat it peace, but we still wanted to see some wildlife eating our ornaments. So we found a branch and stuck it in a pot just outside our sliding glass doors. Then we took a third of the ornaments from the original tree and hung them here. It’s the best of both worlds, and it is a great option for those who don’t have many trees in their yard.
I would love to hear how this works out for you and hear about some of your own family traditions!
Your Woman Gone Wild,
PIN IT FOR LATER!
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This is genius! The bird feeders are so awesome. I can’t wait to do this with my little ones.
Thanks! We had a blast!
What a lovely idea, this is definitely going on our bucket list for next year! In the meantime, we’ll continue to feed the birds as we usually do 🙂
#outdoorplayparty
This is wonderful. The book looks magical too! Thanks so much for linking up at the Outdoor Play Party 🙂
What great ideas & such a great tradition to start. This is a lovely activity for throughout Winter. Thanks so much for joining in with the Outdoor Play Party.
I have shared this on our FB page because I think it is an amazing learning tool as well as fun, hopefully our Forest School will try this too, thank you for an amazing idea, ingenious 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing! Would love to know how it ends up working for you.
Love these ideas. We offer farm camps that celebrate nature and animals. Haven’t tried the dried fruit yet but when we do the popcorn string, we alternate with cranberries and raisins (using plastic needles so no pricked fingers) and let the kids experiment with patterns and sequencing so it is a fun activity for all.
What do you use to string the garland? Thanks for sharing this!
Angelina
No worries – I clicked the link and found my answer – thanks
What do you use for the popcorn stringing, embroidery thread or string is safe for our friends?
What do you use to string the popcorn that is safe for our feathered friends
Hi, we used regular embroidery thread and it worked out great!
I did this with a group of kids back in 2012. Love that story. https://littlecreativedays.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/craft-diary-12th-dec-christmas-crafts-and-stories-part-two/?preview=true
Is there any significance to the date that you do this? We cut down a cedar tree for Christmas every year and when we are ready to put it back outside, that is when we decorate it for the animals and read The Night Tree.
We aligned ours with Tree Dressing Day! I just started doing that this year, so haven’t updated the blog post. Here is a link to the Tree Dressing website. Also, I think the solstice would be a brilliant day to do it on too. I love how you’re making up your own tradition – that’s what makes it special. https://www.commonground.org.uk/tree-dressing-day/
This is what we do all December in my preschool classroom.
So wonderful that you share this experience with the kids in your classroom!
I use Tahini instead of peanut butter so it won’t trigger any allergies – can’t be too careful…