Crafts for Kids - Beading

Beading helps developmental skills, and is a great fun for kids.

Beading as an excellent leisure activity, Children learn about colours, shapes and sizes while developing motor skills. Beading is promoting childrens' developmental skills in the area of PILES (Physical, Intellectual, Language, Emotional, Social).

Fine Motor Skills.Picking a bead up from the beading tray, and then manipulating it in one's hand until it is pinched between your thumb and finger, involves translation, shift and rotation movements of the bead within the hand. Various sizes of beads promote different grasps. Larger beads often promote the "3-jaw chuck" grasp, similar to holding a large pencil or marker. Smaller beads encourage children to use their pincer grasp, thus strengthening the small muscles of their hands. Hand-eye coordination: Threading beads onto a string requires eyes and hands to work together.

Visual Skills: The child must be able to remember the beading pattern to determine the bead they want to use. Once they know what bead they want, visual discrimination assists them in selecting the bead that fits their mental image of the desired bead. Finally, the child must scan across many different beads before finding the desired bead.


Cognitive Skills: Children develops his/her planning and problem-solving skills, Math Skills- counting, sorting, matching.


Social Skills: Beading Parties promote sharing and cooperation. Beading can provide a sense of accomplishment in completing a project that offers freedom of self-expression and camaraderie with other party-goers. This sense of "Occupational Fulfilment" can contribute to improved self-esteem.


For small children or children with difficulty using their hands and fingers use:
Larger beads that have larger holes. Wrapping stiff tape around the end of the beading string, to crate a long "shoelace" style tip that may be easier to push through beads. Hold the string for the child and allow him/her to  put the beads on the string. A successful experience will encourage children to play beading more times.  Beading can still be a special and fun party activity for some children with special needs.


For children with Visual Impairments, try the following accommodations:
Use large, brightly coloured, textured beads, and brightly coloured or textured string (e.g. fuzzy yarn).
Place beads on background of contrasting colour (e.g. light or coloured beads on black paper, and dark beads on light paper).