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These fun red, white, and blue bracelets are an easy July 4th craft that you can do with your kids to celebrate Independence Day. They are great for practicing patterns and fine motor skills, too!
How is it that we are just days away from celebrating the 4th of July around here? Anyone else feel like summer is getting by from us too quickly?! Just me? Cool.
If you are looking for a simple Independence Day craft to do with your kids this week, these red, white, and blue bracelets are for you!
They are easy to put together and good for little hands. Both my toddler and preschooler enjoyed them, and the clean up wasn’t so bad either.
Make Your Own Patriotic Pattern Bracelets
For this craft, you really just need red, white, and blue pony beads and pipe cleaners.
Frankly, any color pipe cleaners will work, but if you really want to stick with the patriotic theme, grab a red, white, or blue pipe cleaners.
We opted to do different colors for the boys so we could easily identify which bracelet belonged to whom.
Our Set Up
To keep things a little more organized, I just used small plastic cups to hold our beads and had them separated by color.
Each of the boys grabbed a few of each color bead at a time for their own work space rather than dumping all the beads in a bowl.
I suggested to them that it might be fun to see what patterns they could create with the beads and showed them how to thread the beads onto the pipe cleaners. But otherwise, let them create their bracelets on their own.
Our July 4th Bracelets
Both boys did a great job on their bracelets. Our oldest designed a fun ABAC pattern with red, white, red, blue for his bracelet and kept it up the whole way.
Our toddler was happy to add beads as he had them, and still made a great bracelet that he was really proud of.
Once they were each finished with their bracelets, I fitted them around their wrist and folded the ends of the pipe cleaners to closet them.
Be careful when you do this because the ends of pipe cleaners can be sharp. I actually used hot glue to cover the pointy ends of the little one’s bracelet so they would not scratch him when he puts his bracelet on and off.
Benefits of Using Pony Beads and Pipe Cleaners
Not only was this a fun afternoon craft and a great seasonal activity for the 4th of July coming up, but there are lots of benefits of using pony beads and pipe cleaners.
Threading the beads onto the pipe cleaners is a great way to practice and improve hand-eye coordination for little hands.
It’s also a really good fine motor activity for toddlers and preschoolers. (Pony beads are a choking hazard for really little ones, so be careful if you have a child who likes to put things in their mouth. And only do this with supervision.)
It helps develop a strong pincer grip, which is useful in building those small muscles that will help with pencil grip and control.
Finally, colorful pony beads are a good way for kids to practice patterns. Older children, especially, can create some complex patterns while preschoolers will be able to use pony bead threading activities to learn and see basic patterns. It is really great for hands-on learners!
If you enjoyed this patriotic craft, you may also like these red, white, and blue sun catchers!
