Gifts Kids Can Make with Perler Beads

December 6, 2023 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Earlier this year I shared some Perler bead projects for kids that includes a couple of fun projects for Christmas, but I also wanted to share some melty bead projects kids can make as gifts.

If you’re like us you have tons of Perler beads (but if you need more here’s a good set) and can always use new ways to use them, so these Perler bead gift ideas are great for kids to make to give of for you to use around the house.

I love the classic melted bead bowl project, which you can see in this list of ideas from Kids Activities Blog. You can use all your leftovers from other projects to make super colorful bowls. There are lots of other great ideas in that list, too, so be sure to check it out.

A different take on the Perler bead bowl is this one from Left Brain Craft Brain, which uses a flat base and layers of rings fused together to make the sides of the bowl. This one uses glue to hold the rings together instead of melting.

Melt beads into discs and you can use them in a DIY mini kaleidoscope project, which would be great to give to another kid or as a stocking stuffer. Check out the instructions for this one at Babble Dabble Do.

Perler bead coasters are super easy to make, and if you have peg boards of different shapes you can make these square, circular or even star-shaped. The designs from Crafty Whatnot would be great for older kids to make, but younger kids can do stripes, color blocking or just place beads at random.

Make tiny designs with melty beads, then add them to a basic melt and pour soap base to make fun soap to give as gifts. I Can Teach My Child mostly used holiday themed designs in the soaps, but you can use whatever designs you like to make washing hands more fun.

Perler Bead Projects for Kids

Perler Bead Snowflake Patterns

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Perler Bead Projects for Kids

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Sun Activities for Kids

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked.

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

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