With a house full of boys, pony beads or any type of bead for that matter is a rare commodity. My three boys are never given crafts or beads as gifts. (I do have a basketful of tractors though!) I know the act of ‘stringing’ is a good life-skill so this activity is a perfect solution to our bead-less home dilemma!
About a year ago, I found a bag of my old beads that were collected from broken necklaces and bracelets so I pulled them out for my (at the time) 3-yr old and 1-yr old to try stringing. For the regular little holes in the beads, yarn was too thick and thread was too wimpy. We ended up using ‘plastic string’ which did work but wasn’t a good solution when it came to a finished product. After watching the boys try to string the beads, I saw how hard this skill really is! There is SO much to learn in life!
For this busy bag, I had my 2-yr old help me cut the straws with scissors (and I was on edge the whole time since it was his first cutting lesson!!). The straws were a very good medium to learn to cut with because it was instant gratification – you snip and ‘pop’ goes the piece of straw. Unlike when learning to cut with paper, the scissors just slip through and it can be hard to see what has been done.
The pieces of straw become the ‘beads’ and this bag includes two pipe cleaners as well as two 12” hemp cords/string that will allow for different ages to use tools their little hands can handle best.
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