If you’re not familiar with “busy boxes”, the idea is to fill a small craft bin with just a few supplies, from which a toddler can keep occupied solo for a time. Veronika was a bit too young for this particular box to be a true busy box, but we did have fun with it together! The bird theme felt just right for springtime.

As prep, I glued wiggle eyes to several small Styrofoam balls, then placed them in a bin along with the following: little pieces of pipe cleaner and feathers.

I showed Veronika how to poke a piece of pipe cleaner into each face as a beak.

Then the feathers can be inserted any which way to complete your birds! Older toddlers could take it from here as a busy box, but Veronika needed help with the mechanics of poking in the sharp point of the feather. “Yellow bird!” she said with delight to one that featured predominantly yellow feathers.

We mixed and matched colors, and then started experimenting with the placement of the feathers. If they stuck upright, the birds looked like turkeys. (In fact, you could consider this as a busy box around Thanksgiving and design all the birds with upright feathers!).

If the feathers trailed towards the back, the birds looked like peacocks.

Out to the side and they looked like little song birds or eagles.

Big brother Travis was the one who came up with the idea of adding additional pipe cleaner pieces to be feet.

Soon we were fluttering and tweeting our birds through the air.

These brought such a big smile to her face!

So a fantastic craft, whether as a true busy box to entertain your toddler solo or to engage in together.