Bird Awareness & A Suzuki Piano Family Reunion

For quite some time, students and I have had our Suzuki Studio Concerts and Piano Performance Classes online. We included creative ways of doing outdoor nature activities in our backyards following the online classes to admire and be inspired by God's wondrous creations as a source of positive healing and hope during the pandemic. (See: Birding and Composing, An Un-BEE-lievable Performance Class, and Earth Day Awareness.) This month, we were finally able to see one another in person for our Performance Class! I cannot fully describe the immense joy that I felt in being with my students and parents again!!!

Students did an excellent job with their performances, and then socialized together eating yummy treats served by our gracious hosts.... The McKenzie Family.♥ They have such a "BEAUTIFUL" backyard....perfect for a gathering among our nature loving group. In addition, they generously prepared their fireplace so that students could treat themselves to making delicious S'mores! We truly loved our experience and thank them from the heart for all of their hard work.

During the months of December-January, we will be focusing on birds and participating in various Bird Counts. To invite the birds to our backyards, we created bird feeders in the shape of pianos. The ingredients and tools that we used are in the photos below.

It was fun seeing all of the smiles and laughter as students were creating their feeders. Initially, there was some timidity about adding dried meal worms to the feeders, however one of the students stepped forward to give it a try! Check out "Queen Bee" Karis leading the way!!! From there on, other students joined in adding meal worms to their feeders!

There are many wonderful websites online that teaches you how to make homemade suet. Here are the ingredients that we used:
1 cup lard
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup all purpose flour
3 cups cornmeal
Additional add ins: oats, bird seed, dried meal worms, raisins, unsalted peanuts

First, we tied a ribbon to the cookie cutters. Next, we warmed the lard and peanut butter. Once warmed, we added all purpose flour and corn meal. Students and I had a great time getting messy digging our hands in to mix the ingredients together. The mixture was put into the piano cookie cutters and added the additional add ins listed.

Would you like to see photos of the finished product? Here are a few.