Perler mania

I bought Luke a bin of Perler beads at the craft store last month. I enjoyed these as a child, although I believe I was a good bit older than Luke when I worked with them. I thought they might provide a little quiet activity but wasn't sure if he would catch on. Luke doesn't really enjoy coloring, and I don't really enjoy messy crafts full of paint so. . .we were needing a little creative outlet. I have been really surprised how much he enjoys making these and he has quickly progressed from filling a pegboard with random colors to following relatively complex diagrams very accurately. I think he has great attention to detail and excellent fine motor skills! Not to mention skill with early math in counting the rows, how many beads are left, etc.

The beads are placed on a pegboard. Here, you can see he is following the diagram on the bottom right hand corner of the book he is looking at. He was able to do this almost entirely by himself. I made one correction early on where he had left off a row on the shovel. He uses a pen to count the beads on the diagram--he saw us doing the same and copied!

Here is his complete pattern, ready to be ironed. An adult irons the beads with ironing paper on top to fuse them together into a sheet.