I Greater than Three this Craft!

The Punk and I made hearts for Valentine's Day today. This craft took me to a happy place. Melty plastic, bright colors, hearts... love! They are called Perler Beads at most craft sores, but I (of course) bought ours from IKEA. We also bought the shapes set that goes with the beads. I sat up late last night and picked out only red, white and pink beads and sorted them on one of the Punk's crafting trays. We got started right away, and we both had a lot of fun picking out each bead to go in each spot. This is a GREAT way to work on fine motor skills, and it's fairly difficult (even for me) I was proud of him for having the patience to stick with it.

After we set our beads in place I melted them. The Punk was safely in the living room playing Hotwheels, and I went at it. Parchment paper, iron and a washcloth was all I needed (The IKEA directions just show a stick figure and an iron, so I Googled some better instructions).

Paper under, paper over, press with a hot iron.

Voila!

We ended up making 3 hearts today. I am thinking about gluing some magnets to the back so they can have a bit more purpose.

We talked about patterns, colors, heat, all kinds of interesting stuff. And while he's not able to do the magical-amazing-melting part of the activity, I can still see it being something we work with again and again.