Hendrik's bird-day celebration + nature hunt

For Hendrik's 6th birthday this week, the party theme was an obvious one given his current obsession - and my love of an opportunity for a play on words - so a bird-day celebration it was! Actually more like two of them, since we have lots of family to celebrate with, but also wanted to have a chance to get together with some of his friends and their families. This made for a super fun weekend of celebrating our birdy boy - and for a huge stack of new bird guides and books thanks to all of their generosity! Here's a little recap of round one of our bird-day fun...

We met up with a couple of families at a local nature preserve that has some easy walking/hiking trails, a nice picnic table area, and best of all for our purposes, a birds of prey rescue center. The fun started with a nature scavenger hunt; as we walked out to the birds of prey viewing area, the kids used their fun feather pens (these were a big hit!) to check off all of the birds and other nature elements on the list. We brought along some cute inexpensive binoculars for everyone too, to make them feel like even more authentic bird watchers.

Then while the kids had fun in the natural playscape area, I set out the dirt cake (I mean, how could you not to this for a bird-day treat?! Complete with gummy worms) and some "bird food" (trail mix with plenty of nuts/seeds and dried fruits that humans and birds alike would enjoy). Then after some more play time, we sent everyone home with a little goodie bag with a color-your-own bird glider, some bird stickers, and a mini Kind bar.

SUPER easy approach to a party, with no house cleaning involved, getting any sugar energy used up in the outdoors, and just an all-around delightful way to hang out with some other families. Not to mention that dirt cake is delicious. I had totally forgotten that!