I'm sure these are pretty self explanatory and have been being done (is that how you say that?) for years. But, nonetheless, I thought it was a great activity to do for our winter unit. We just got done talking about animals in winter last week, so we talked more about how many birds fly or migrate to warmer climates to survive the winter. But there are still many birds that stay where it is cold and eat what they need to survive. Sometimes snow can get very deep and it's hard for them to find food, so that is why these niftly little bird feeders come in handy!!
I let my kids go at this in the messy table, because after all.....it IS a mess! But they were so excited to "feed the birdies"!! Let each child have a popsicle stick and they can plop as much peanut butter as possible onto their pinecone.
As soon as it is covered with peanut butter (and believe me, this takes these little ones a little bit of time), they get to roll it in wild bird seed. I just got crushed sunflower seeds for birds from Walmart. I'm sorry about the above picture, it's kind of blurry.
Then I tie a string onto them so they can be hung from a tree for the birds to easily get at. For easy take home, I just put them in plastic ziplocks and put their names on them. Most of the kids made about 3 or 4 of these.....what a blast!!
First, have each child put their bare hands in a bowl of freezing ice water. We like to count and see how long they can hold it in there (great counting practice). Every class I always get at least a couple of brave souls who leave their hand in there as long as they possibly can - I always stop them at 30!! Who knows how long they would actually leave it in there - crazy kids!!
Then, take a rubber glove and have one child make a fist and have them put there hand in the glove (obviously you aren't going to have them put their fingers in the finger places :). I like to wear a rubber glove also, basically for less clean up. 
and cover that child's hand with shortening. 
I just plop it on until the whole fist is covered....I use quite a bit. 
I take my glove off and then I cover the child's fat covered hand with plastic wrap (this is for easier clean up also).
Now just have the child put their hand in the icy water now.......the kids think it is the coolest thing that they now can't feel the icy cold water. I don't count this time because we would be there all day.....I just let them see how a Polar Bear (or a penguin or a seal or any other freezing Arctic animal) might feel. Once you are done with the first child, I carefully slip the fat covered glove off and have the next child slip in their fist. It works pretty smoothly. 
