by Laura Falin posted in Life & Home

I love watching kids in the garden. They get messy and dig around and pull things up and investigate worms and just have a lovely time. When my boy was 2, he spent an entire morning digging small holes in my garden beds and gleefully yelling, "I planting chicken!"
So when we can make crafts to go in the garden we love, even better.

This is a great activity for preschoolers. Threading beads on pipe cleaners is easier than trying to manage floppy string or yarn, and there's less danger of all the beads falling off the other end, which always results in tears. So many tears.

We used whatever beads we had on-hand -- a mish mash of pony beads and those flowery sort of plastic beads (fun fact: I'm supposed to be cleaning my basement right now because my parents are coming to visit and all I've managed to do so far is spill half a box of pony beads all over the carpet. Help.) And we used sparkly pipe cleaners. You can use any kind of pipe cleaner, of course, but I believe you can never have too much chocolate when you're baking or too much sparkle when you're crafting.
Supplies:

three pipe cleaners per gazing ball (sparkly or not)
pony beads or other large plastic beads

Instructions:
Thread beads onto three pipe cleaners until they are full. Take your first pipe cleaner, form a circle, and twist pipe cleaner at the top to close. Take your second pipe cleaner, form a circle around the first, and twist to close. Take a third pipe...