Turn your pumpkin into a bird feeder

This year we carved a few pumpkins to decorate the house over Halloween. I also bought a selection of gourds and munchkins to display. I didn’t want to just put them in the food waste bin when Halloween was over. I’m trying so hard to reduce our food waste and pumpkins can be quite wasteful. So this year we upcycled our pumpkins, making them into simple, natural bird feeders. It’s a really fun STEM craft to make with kids and it reduces waste too.

Equipment needed to turn your pumpkin into a bird feeder

Carved pumpkin

Skewer

String

Bird seed

Sharp knife

How to turn your pumpkin into a bird feeder

First we upcycled our little munchkins. Due to their size they were simple to cut up. I removed the top then the children carefully scooped out most of the seeds.

I pushed a metal skewer about 1 cm from the top through the side of the munchkin and made sure it went through the other side.

Cut a length of string long enough to go through both sides of the pumpkin and long enough to hang up. Then we poked a length of string through one of the holes, tied a knot in the end to make sure it stayed in place, and threaded it through the other side.

We took our pumpkins outside to fill them up with bird seed.

The children were happy to pour the wild bird seed into the little containers.

Then we hung them up in the branches of our trees.

Our large pumpkins had also been carved (this year we had an otter, a normal pumpkin face and an Orla Kiely design). They were easy to upcycle in the same way. We decided not to hang them as they were all quite big. Instead we removed their little hats and filled them with seeds. We placed them near our homemade bug hotel for all our little garden visitors to enjoy.

 

This is a great way to re-use pumpkins and a fun activity for kids. There are so many ways to see what happens to pumpkins when you pick them and cave them. They are fun for Halloween but a great learning resource too!