Maker Monday: How to make beautiful paper beads

When the pandemic began, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh quickly began offering lots of digital programming to keep kids learning, making and playing while schools were closed. Among their offerings was a series of “Let’s Try” videos showing kids how to do fun, simple maker projects. In partnership with our friends at the Children’s Museum, beginning this week we’re sharing these videos as part of our rebooted Maker Monday series.

Here is the first of these easy-to-follow videos: How to make paper beads.

A note to kid makers: Please work with a parent or caregiver on every project and always be very careful when using tools of any kind.

Materials you’ll need:

• any colorful scrap paper you have around the house (magazine pages, old phone books if you have them, or anything will do)
• scissors
• plastic drinking straws
• glue
• string or yarn (if you want to make a necklace)

Maker Monday project instructions:

• Cut paper into strips
• Apply glue to a few strips of paper, covering almost all the way to the end of each strip
• Use the straw to roll the paper into a bead, then slide it off the straw
• Once you’ve made all your beads, slide them back onto the straw
• To make a necklace, push a piece of string through the straw, then slide the beads off the straw onto the string

See it all on this video (and check out other Maker Monday projects right here!):