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Best Gifts for Kids: You’re Going to Love Beados

This post is sponsored by Moose Toys.

I have a confession to make. When I was asked to review the Beados range by Moose Toys, I actually didn’t think I would like them….BUT we love them! You see I have never been a huge fan of those sets with little plastic beads that you have to iron together to make anything. I mean I don’t like to iron for (house)work, let alone for play! What I am learning though, is that Moose Toys have an answer for seemingly everything – first the Glow Show glow-in-the-dark stickers that are removable and now Beados that absolutely DO NOT require an iron but actually stick together with a light spray of water. Genius!

In fact, Beados have earned a place right at the top of my list of gift suggestions for creative kids. My girls have been making with them non-stop. As they play with Beados I can see them applying creative skills, problem solving skills, concentration and task perseverance, they are developing fine motor skills, and they’ve even inspired imaginative play – my girls have been using a set of different shaped Beados creations as magical elements in fairy figurine play.

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados for kids who love to create

They’ve also made…

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados. A great gift for kids who love to create. Uses water to fuse, no ironing!

…bag tags (are bag tags insanely popular at your school too?)…

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados. A great gift for kids who love to create. Uses water to fuse, no ironing!

…rings and necklaces…

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados. A great gift for kids who love to create. Uses water to fuse, no ironing!

…and sun catchers.

Fusible bead Christmas decorations with free printable patterns

We also got our creative on and decided to have a go at creating our own Christmas ornaments. Cool, huh?! You’ll find a printable version of our three ornament patterns – a tree, star and bell, and a blank grid for your own designs, below.

Beados are available in a large range of themed playsets. The smaller Refill Packs include themes such as the winter Wonderland Castle, Precious Pendants and Family Playtime. They are great for getting little fingers busy….

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados. A great gift for kids who love to create. Uses water to fuse, no ironing!

…even our littlest fingers are enjoying the workout…

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados. A great gift for kids who love to create. Uses water to fuse, no ironing!

The Sunshine Butterfly Activity Pack is a medium sized sun catcher kit that includes these funky tweezers. We gave them a good go but my two actually prefer using their fingers to the tweezers.

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados. A great gift for kids who love to create. Uses water to fuse, no ironing!

The Beados Gem Design Studio includes a fancy bead dispenser. It would be fair to say Immy loves it.

Best Gifts for Kids: Check out Beados. A great gift for kids who love to create. Uses water to fuse, no ironing!

So the Beados kits score a definite two thumbs up here. There will be more packs wrapped and waiting under our tree for family and friends this Christmas!

For those in Australia and the USA, be sure to keep an eye out for Moose Toys’ Beados Activity Packs in major department stores, toy stores and via your favourite online toy retailers. You can also check out Beados on Amazon.com or contact Moose Toys for stockists in your country.

Print our Christmas Ornament Designs

Fusible bead Christmas decorations with free printable patterns

To download and print: Click here to download. Download or save the PDF file to your own computer. Open the PDF and print. When printing, print at 100%. Personal, non commercial use only.

Christmas ornaments with free printable patterns

WIN A BEADOS PRIZE PACK

Win a Beados prize pack

One Australian Childhood 101 reader will win a Beados Prize Pack (total value $114.97) consisting of one Beados Gem Design Studio, one Beados Gem Sunshine and six Beados Refill Packs.

Entry is simple. This is a game of skill and entries will be judged based on creativity and originality. To enter, leave a comment on this post in response to this question:

Tell me – which toy inspires the most creative play for kids at your house?

Australian entrants only. One entry per IP address. Entries close 5pm AEDST 26 November, 2015.

P.S. Pop over to Picklebums to see another super cool product using this same water technology – QIXELS. With a pixelated 8bit look they are sure to be a hit with those who love Minecraft or Lego.

Christie Burnett is an early childhood teacher, presenter, writer and the editor of Childhood 101. More importantly, she is a Mum who believes wholeheartedly in the value of children learning through play, the importance of quality early education, and the togetherness of family.

Read more of Christie's adventures at https://childhood101.com.

Read the comments or scroll down to add your own:

  1. What toy inspires the most creative play? That old sock that's been hiding under the bed for the last 6 months. It's a bed for the barbies, a washcloth for the teddies, a nappy for the babies, a bread roll in the picnic, a cloth in the toy kitchen, a wipe for the dirty face, a hat for the toy dress ups, a flag in the parade, a finger puppet... The list goes on! All for the piece of washing I once missed.

  3. Play-Doh makes imagination come alive For my daughters, aged 11, 8, and 5 On weekends, they could play for hours Making houses, animals, shapes, and flowers We have lots of cutters for them to choose And lots of tubs, in their favourite hues But this Beados prize would make a welcome change They'd be able to share this delightful range!

  4. What toy inspires my kids most? We've got a tub of Australian animal figurines that we've collected from the Visitors Centre shop a short walk from our house. The kids will come up with so many different imaginative games with them! I love how they classify the animals and use facts they know in their play!

  5. The "Craft Box" - in reality a dumping place for every odd bit and piece. If it is pretty, shiny, clean, reusable etc it finds it's way to here & becomes magically transformed. I love the box because it devours, the children love it because of the seemingly endless supply of treasures they can use to create.

  6. Strangely enough it's the groceries on the bench that I'm trying to put away after our trip to the supermarket. My 2.5 & almost 4 yo love playing shops! They grab their toy trolly, a calculator from my office desk, a bunch of groceries and away they go, taking turns to be shop keeper and customer. I find their dialogue most entertaining :)

  7. My kids love beados! I'd have to say the toy at our place that inspires creative play the most is our box of recyclables that I keep for crafting. They combine them with their other toys to make houses, palaces, small worlds and patterns. My 7 year old just made a big display stand for her shopkins (latest obsession) using shoebox lids - they are so creative at this age that anything open ended provides plenty of inspiration for them.

  8. I love these beads. But the answer to your question would have to be Lego, every time. From building with it, to creating little games where the characters interact, all three boys adore their lego

  9. Oh they look fun - I've not seen them before. Thanks for sharing. My kids love all my craft off-cuts - and get so creative with them! Little bits of fabric and ribbon and wool... and they're off creating something fab. I love watching them be creative - it's so satisfying.

  10. The toy that inspires the most creativity is our puppet theater. My girls love making up stories for the puppets to act out. Sometimes my eldest will even write them down. They love to craft new puppets and props to go with their stories and of course you can't watch unless you're given a handmade ticket to the concert and a stamp at the door!

  11. anything related to beads of all kinds. Keeps them entertained for hours & is good for their fine motor skills.

  12. Our craft box full of odds and ends which my girls love creating master art works to display around the house and to give to friends and family

  13. Boxes, when they were really little it was just to sit in and drag around, but has progressed to decorating and actually building with empty boxes. Our best investment was the box from a large fridge our next door neighbor had delivered its been weeks of fun

  15. Blank pieces of paper inspire my twins the most. They can scrunch paper into a ball to throw or kick, they can fold it into an animal shape or even rip it up to make it "snow"! Combine paper with pencils and suddenly you have an story book or drawing just ready to reveal itself from seemingly nothing but imagination! Simple magic.

  16. My three year old loves all sorts of toys but atm Barbies are her big thing that and horses but I want and try to get her into creative play.

  17. Play-doh. My girls use it alongside many other toys, like parties for Barbie's, making goods to take somewhere on the back or their trains. My eldest draws designs then tries to make them with play-doh. My youngest uses her pencils to stick in it. They can play for hours which is good as it can be difficult to keep young children interested

  18. i have 6 children ranging from 15 to 2 years. so theres always a child playing with something somewhere in my house. sheets and tables become cubby houses and my kitchen becomes a musical orchestra. Never a dull moment in my house and i love it.

  19. The Ipad is great if you download educational apps on it and always oversee what they are doing

  20. The simple finished toilet roll inspires my 3.5 year old everytime "MUM what can we make with this?" Quickly followed by "can we do craft?" She would love these! I'm pretty sure she would have me making jewelry all day long!

  21. The most creative play in our house comes from empty food boxes, toilet rolls, pop sticks and any other left over bits of wrapping paper, ribbon etc my two can make things for hours from lions to princess castles, race cars to rocket ships the list is endless. I love seeing their imagination come to life and the joy in their eyes when they create something.

  22. Books. Sometimes we are characters that we've read and other times imagined. Reading is really such an important and fun way to learn.

  23. Dress ups. Hands down. My 8 and 6 year olds still love dress ups and often drag them out and assume many character roles. They have moved on from the traditional commercial fairies and princesses to now enjoying putting collections of tops, skirts, scarves, wigs, shoes etc to create their own characters:)

  24. Hot wheel cars the boys love making race track painting with them and looking at the track marks they make

  25. my daughter collects leaves, flowers, rocks, bottle caps & all manner of other 'nature stuff' when ever we go out & when we are at home she potters about making all sorts of arrangements with them. Currently she's making salad for some toys :)

  26. The most creative play in our home comes from the off cuts of timber, the off cuts of pvc pipe, variety of stones and rocks, shells and logs found in our sandpit useful box

  27. The most creative play occurs in my large beautiful tree in my yard.... It has everything hung in it, climbed up, used as a shield, has words written in with the drill, is a shelter during Nerf wars, and sometimes the folk of a branch is just sad in to rest. it attracts the visiting children to my home.

  28. The toy that inspires the most creative play is Lego! My boy loves Lego, he makes all sorts of creations and plays for hours with what he makes. I'd love to win the Beadis pack as I'm sure his cousins would love to get creative too!

  29. My daughter adores playdoh and paint. They're her favourites and her painting is coming along so well with all the practice she gets :) she also adores gellez kits :)

  30. C-ome over to our house on a R-egular day E-veryone's creating A masterpiece T-oday E-verything's being created from the recycling bin, yah!

  31. The girls love craft and these beads look great the girls have a extra large cork board in the play room where they hang all the paintings they do they also decorate shoe boxes to keep their treasures in

  32. Ok, you converted me too! I thought these looked like a pain but they are actually amazingly creative with what you can do, my kids would looooove them! As for what inspires the most creative play? It would have to be a classic - Lego! The kids not only build buildings and vehicles, they use Lego to make a 'snail house' (for the snail they just found in the garden), to make instruments for their nightly pre-bed performance (always charming!), and yesterday they even made cleaning implements to assist with their room clean up!!!! I love the vast possibilities with Lego, and now I am loving the vast possibilities of Beados too!!

  33. The dress up box combined with a sheet over the dining room table..takes them to so many places, they spend hours in there with lego, craft, dolls, cars, the table becomes anything they like

  34. Actually Beados crystal kit and Orbeez are the most creative play in our home. I actually LOVE both of them. I would really love to be the winner.

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