Tuesday Tips - Perler Beads

Sam Jones is the Youth Services Librarian at the Beaver Dam Public Library. She shares tips to make your job easier in her Tuesday posts.

This month, I had my most popular Teen Zone activity to date. At my library, Teen Zone is our meeting space that I open up after school for middle and high schoolers to come and hang out. At one of our Teen Advisory Board meetings, someone suggested making perler bead designs as an activity. When I set it up, almost everyone who came in the room sat down to make something. I even extended it to a three-day event instead of the planned one-day event because they still had ideas of things to make. 

I noticed that the teens liked to do their own designs more than the shaped pegboards. They were also super creative in what they were making. One person made Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc., which was so cool. Alot of them also really enjoyed the tweezers that came in the pack I bought, which I wasn't expecting. I am definitely buying more when we do this next. I also heard of a mini vacuum that picks up perler beads that I might buy too because the beads got everywhere (mostly from me.. oops). If anyone has a strong opinion on the perler bead vacuum, please let me know. 

Overall, it was a lowkey program that people really seemed to enjoy. One of the teens said that they found using perler beads to be really relaxing. This is definitely something I would run again for them.