Fun with Perler Beads

A while back I decided to buy some Perler beads so Charlie and I could have a fun craft to do together. We work on this while Emmett naps. I like doing crafts, and I'd like to share that hobby with my kids. Creating is awesome! Also, fine motor skills have never been one of Charlie's strengths, so I figured this would be a good craft to help him work on that.

I started out with buying a bucket of a variety of colors, like this. Charlie doesn't really care about what colors he has, and he's not quite ready to really follow a pattern or create a pattern of his own. I've been able to make a few things with the color selections we've got, but for projects that use a lot of the same color, I'll probably need to buy additional beads. I'll also need to buy some bigger pegboards. Here are some patterns that I want to make for Charlie:

Captain America & Batman

Superhero or other brand specific toys (like Nintendo) are typically expensive, and this is a good, cheap alternative. And Charlie gets very excited when I make him something like this. And by very I mean that he will be thoroughly entertained for at least the next hour playing with it. At least.

The first time Charlie and I sat down to do this, we spent some time sorting the beads by color, and he did pretty good with it. Then we started putting the beads on the pegboards. He did ok, but he didn't understand what the end result would be, so he lost interest and didn't really have enough beads on his pegboard to make anything. I made a rainbow heart.

The second time Charlie did much better. We sorted some more before we got started. Charlie put a good amount of beads on his pegboard. I still had to help him finish his project, but he did very well on his own. And I made him a Pokeball. He was thrilled!

The next time we invited a friend and her mom over to do beads with us. Also a success. We had a good time and both kids were pretty successful in making theirs--still needing some help to finish.

We did some more yesterday, and I made Charlie a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Michelangelo at his request. While I was looking back and forth at the pattern, Charlie took a look, dug around for some beads, and said, "You need two pink for his tongue!" And handed me two pink. I was surprised and impressed. I think next time I'll have him help me build one from a pattern. Maybe he's closer to being ready for patterns than I thought.

The word of the day while working with the Perler beads yesterday was "loseable." Charlie kept saying, "These beads are loseable." Over and over and over. It was a little annoying, but I didn't know a word to teach him as a replacement. After all, these beads definitely possess the ability to be lost. What other word for that is there?