How to Make Friendship Bracelets

This summer I’ve been sharing some fun summery crafts for kids, and while I already shared a couple of friendship bracelet patterns, there are so many out there it’s worth another look.

Bracelets are a great craft for kids because they aren’t that difficult to make but they do take some time, there are lots of possible variations and the supplies tend to be inexpensive and you don’t need a lot.

In my research on making friendship bracelets, I found that some of the easiest ones are known as the Chinese ladder (no idea why), candy stripe and chevron.

You can also call the Chinese ladder a spiral bracelet, as that’s what it looks like when you’re finished. Melanie from Artzy Creations shares a pattern for this one at Design Dazzle. She uses five colors but once you have it down you can use as many or as few as you like.

The candy stripe in three colors I think is the only kind of friendship bracelet I ever knew how to make. Sarah Maker has a good tutorial for this one using four colors.

Chevron is probably my favorite because it looks fancy and makes a nice wide bracelet. You need two strands of each color you are using so it gets big fast, but is also a lot of fun to make. There’s a photo and video tutorial at The Neon Tea Party to get you started. (Here’s another video from Simple DIYs.)

Of course these three basic patterns are just scratching the surface of what you can do with friendship bracelets.

This simple twisted bracelet from Twitchetts is great for younger kids who might not have the dexterity or patience for all of that knot tying. You can also make them with thread or yarn, and add beads if you like. Or try this one from Panda Hall, which is just made with braided pieces tied together. I love the addition of charms to this one.

Make a fun fishtail bracelet with this video from SoCraftastic. If you need more ideas, check out the designs at Marching North and Red Ted Art. Do you have a favorite friendship bracelet pattern? I’d love to hear about it!

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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