Beadazzled

First I want to apologize for the long lapse in posting.  As you can imagine things have been rather busy at our home...the twins turned three, I am working part-time (currently three jobs), and it is summer.  We are constantly on the go so I haven't really been home long enough to formulate a post in my mind let alone find time to sit down (that isn't in the bathroom) to type it up.  That all changed today.  Why you ask?  We are all sick!  Just head colds that started with Abby and has now struck Tanner, my husband, and myself...gotta love family germs.  The twins and I were supposed to head to my parents in Caribou for a few days this afternoon, but that trip was postponed due to illness.  So here I sit on my couch with blankets and a hot cup of tea while the twins take an extra long and much needed nap.

Yesterday my sister in law, Heidi, and I went to the BIG city of Augusta for a Sam's Club run (sans twins, thanks to my mother in law).  We stopped at Michael's to buy elastic that my mother in law needed for a project she is working on.  As I walked through the aisles I came upon some bags of beads that were on sale.  I picked a bag of neon stars* and a bag of safari animals*, both generic enough to be used/liked by both Twinkies.  I also picked up a package of colorful laces* for them to string the beads on.

They played with them briefly last night while we were out for dinner and waiting for our food.  They each strung some lovely necklaces, Abby even designed one for our waitress, Virginia.  Abby asked for the beads this afternoon when she woke up from her nap.  I got them out and she and Tanner began stringing the beads once again.

Stringing our new beads!

After a little while Abby said she wanted to sort the beads so I got out an egg carton for her to do so.  Tanner quickly hopped on the bandwagon and wanted to sort too.  They worked quietly sorting their beads by color for about five minutes and then decided that they were all done.

Sorting beads by color.

This was an impluse purchase that turned out to be somewhat educational.  Stringing the beads strengthens fine motor skills as well as hand eye coordination.  Tanner and Abby have used beads before, putting them onto pipe cleaners but the laces were a new experience for them.  I also like how the beads can be used for sorting by color OR shape.  In the future we could focus on making patterns with our beads as we string them.  The possibilities are endless.

 

Putting beads on pipe cleaners (April 2013)

* These are not links to the exact products I bought.  I threw the packaging out before I wrote the blog post so I couldn't properly identify them.  These are VERY similar to the ones I bought, however, mine were on sale at Michael's :)