hama bead creations - card embelishments and life companions

As you may have read, yesterday afternoon we got out the hama bead sets. Each came with 400 beads, a small board and a tiny piece of greaseproof paper. I bought 3 different sets, so we have one circle, one hexagon and one heart.

We made some designs that were shown on the sets and some from our own "maginations". Tiny Clanger needed a bit of help with her ladybird, but managed to get most of the beads on with some additional hand guidance.

Little Clanger's heart and bird.

My snowflake and Tiny Clanger's ladybird.

Small Clanger's snowflake and butterfly.

Next we debated what we could do with them, and this is what we came up with:

A birthday card for Little Clanger's friend Melody.

If you're Melody's mum and you're reading this... don't let Melody see! It's supposed to be a surprise! (She says, putting pictures on a public blog...! Tsk.) Needless to say there are now plans for a tonne more beads, and some differently shaped boards that we can make topical designs on. Anyone on our Christmas card list should now have a good idea what their Christmas card will look like. Hopefully not in black though. We only did black because we apparently only have black coloured card...

Meanwhile, Tiny Clanger has become rather attached to her ladybird. She carried it around with her for the rest of yesterday, took it to bed with her, and hasn't put it down yet this morning. As a result we have had the beads out again this morning so that matching ladybirds can also be made for Little Clanger and Small Clanger:

Ladybird life companions.

Having taken them on an adventure around the house together, Small Clanger is now building a giant duplo railway all round his bedroom and out onto the landing which his ladybird can ride on, and the girls are drawing habitats for their ladybirds. After drawing the tree and leaves Little Clanger asked me what ladybirds eat, so I invited her to use the almighty Google to find out, and we discovered The Ladybug Lady website, which answered the question fairly quickly. It also sparked the "what's a larva?" question, although upon mentioning the insect lifecycle it was clear she already knew, but had simply forgotten the technical name. The pictures on the life cycle page also explained what those "scary looking bugs" were on the wall by the bus stop on Monday - they were ladybird larvae! Anyway, she's now drawing millions of aphids on her ladybird's habitat.

Once again I am happily reminded how learning can evolve from the most unrelated of starts. I am also reminded that I need to buy a new printer as a matter of urgency. A printer that refuses to print black does not lend itself to printing off worksheets or colouring pages! It's on the to do list, I promise!