Just when you think winter will never end, you wake up one morning to the tweeting of birds. The sound always makes me happy: I was raised in a family that was big on birds. We had multiple feeders outside our kitchen window, and my mom always made note, over her cup of coffee, about which birds were enjoying breakfast at the same time we were.

Now, I keep a Droll Yankee feeder—the easiest to refill and hang—in a sugar maple tree off the family room, and the boys and I always look for the neighborhood blue jay to make his rounds. Keeping a feeder filled has always seemed to me to be a great way to teach kids a number of lessons at once: selflessness, appreciation of the natural world, and the value of quiet observation, to name a few.

Yesterday morning, we visited the incredible deCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, where curators were celebrating Henry David Thoreau’s Walden through artwork and interactive exhibits. In the kids’ activity room, museum staffers introduced the boys and me to a project I had never heard about before but immediately fell in love with: nest helpers. Basically, you gather a variety of natural and synthetic filler materials—from yarn to netting to sticks and leaves—and bind it together with pipe cleaners or yarn to hang or suspend in a tree. Especially in the still-barren days of early spring, birds will pull from these little bundles to build their nests.

The results are a little messy looking, which is really the beauty of this craft. It’s great for little hands and short attention spans. Here are some good materials to start with. Anything soft and strong works; biodegradable is best.

-Pipe cleaners, wire, or a berry basket from the supermarket

-Different color yarn, snipped into 1- or 2-foot strands

-Twigs and leaves

-Raffia or ribbon

-Spare fabric or rags, cut into small pieces

Start with a little holder for your materials: Bend two or three pieces of pipe cleaner or multiple strands of wire around one another to make a spherical shape, twisting closed at the top until an open ball is formed. (A berry basket is ready to go.) Stuff the ball or basket with your soft materials and hang the nest helper from a tree where birds frequent. Watch throughout the spring to see if your materials disappear, and keep an eye out for nests that have been made with colorful pieces from your helper ball or basket.