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Hama Beads
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Now these aren't the easiest of things to describe so bare with me! The kit consists of lots of little brightly coloured beads. They are made from plastic and are cylindrical in shape. The beads come in three different sizes, mini, midi and maxi. The mini beads are 2.5mm in diameter and are recommended for children aged 10 and upwards as they are a lot more fiddly and need lots of patience and co-ordination, the midi beads are 5mm in diameter and are aimed at children aged 5 and over and the maxi beads are 10mm in diameter and are recommended for children 3 years and over as younger childrens concentration and co-ordination skills are not as developed as older children, so the larger size makes the beads easier to use with little hands. Due to the small size of these beads they are not suitable for children under 3 years old as children of that age would not posses the co-ordination skills required. The small beads can also pose a choking hazard so they should be kept well out the way of little children as they are far to easy to stick in their mouth, ears or up their nose!
The kit also contains peg boards which the beads are to be put onto. These can come in all sorts of shapes and colours (although the colour of the board isn't relevant) and the boards can come as part of a set or can be brought separately. Examples of the peg board shapes are; teddy bears, circles, squares, hexagons, hearts, stars, people. Pretty much any shape you could imagine!
A piece of 'ironing paper' is also provided which is used when ironing the design (more on that later!).

Once you have decided on a pegboard to use you simply place it on a flat surface ready to begin your design. You place the beads on the pegboard until you have created the design you want, The beads are small and fiddly so it can be quite awkward to get them on the peg board and it does take a fair bit of patience! Once your design is complete, you need to place the piece of 'ironing paper' over the design and then apply a hot iron to the ironing paper for a few seconds using smooth, circular movements. The temperature of the iron depends on the size of the beads you have used, for the mini beads you should set the iron to the wool setting, for the midi beads you should set the iron to the cotton setting and for the maxi beads the iron should be set to the linen setting. As you iron the design the colours of the beads will show through the ironing paper to show that the ironing is completed. It is then advisable to leave the design to cool down for a bit (or it will go squidgy and become ruined and you will also burn yourself…trust me!) Once the design is dried you can remove it from the peg board and voila! You have your design!
The pegboards and the ironing paper can be used again for future design but obviously the beads which you have just used wont be able to be used again as they are now part of a design!

The company started of making plastic drink straws in 1991 when it was founded by Malte Haaning. The company moved on to making items such as cocktail sticks, skipping ropes, fly swatters, bird feeders etc (interesting stuff!) but when they realised that the demand for beads was so high they had a bash at making them. The different sized plastic beads were created and became so popular that in 1984, the HAMA name was registered as a trademark. Whilst reading about Hama on the website I found out that the name is derived from the name of the founder of the company: HA = the first two letters of his surname, and MA = the first two letters of his first name. I thought that was pretty interesting!! Anyway, basically hama began making more and more products using their beads and now sell products to over 50 countries world wide.

Hama are constantly bringing out different shaped peg boards but as well as the standard hama beads and pegboards they sell 'Maxi stick' which are pegboards for little hands (kids aged 3 and up) where the kids actually insert pegs with sticks into a pinboard, Miss Hama which is a set that girls can use to make jewellery (or boys I suppose but it is aimed specifically at girlies!) and bead designer which allows kids to make designs on the computer.

There are numerous variations of hama bead sets available. The set we got for Christmas was a large cylinder shaped plastic tub (clear so you can see all of the brightly coloured beads inside) with a screw on lid (which helps prevent spillage!!). Our tub contained 9000 beads of various bright colours (ok so I didn't count them

Pictures of Hama Beads

a bear i made!!

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Obviously this toy encourages creativity and imagination in both children and adults. It also develops co-ordination and motor skills as well as patience and if children work on their designs in groups it can also encourage the development of their social skills. The bright colours of the beads encourage young children to form patterns as well as explore how different colours 'look' together. These beads also encourages children to work out ways of 'handling' items in the most effective way, for example the beads can be used more easily if you hold them in between your fingertip and thumb. Children will also be able to choose shapes of the pegboards when creating their design as well as getting an idea of quantities as they discover how many beads are needed for completing designs and recognise that if you use more of one coloured bead in your design then you will need more of that colour of bead (seems simple to use but its something that children actually don't realise until they get practise). Playing with this product will mean that the child is constantly thinking, when my little brother completed his first design he just put beads on willy nilly and then realised that it didn't look like he had wanted to as it just looked like a multicoloured shape, he later began to learn that where he placed the different colours made a huge difference on what the final design looked like. This toy has so many educational benefits to a child's development, whether they work at it on their own or with the help of an adult.

I love this product!! It is so much fun to make different designs and they look really effective once they are completed. You need a fair bit of patience as it will take a little while to complete a design and it can be difficult to use the smaller beads as they can be very fiddly although I find it really therapeutic and enjoyable. As the beads are small they do have a habit of getting everywhere! The last thing you want to do is accidentally knock over a tub of 9000 of these things!! (trust me on that one too!). If you have little kids or pets around then you will need to make sure the beads don't get left in reach of them as they might get eaten! Mind you, the beads are so small that if they were accidentally swallowed its not going to choke you its just not the brightest of ideas! The beads are also made to pretty high safety standards so if they are accidentally swallowed they wont damage your insides.
I love the variety of kits that are available and I think it is good that you can buy the pegboards, beads and paper separately and at a reasonable price. The beads come in a nice variety of colours and the beads and pegboards seem to be of a high quality. The ironing paper and pegboards can be used over and over again (as long as you are careful with the iron!)
The hama bead kits are fun for all the family, are a great boredom preventer for kids and allow you to make some really good designs! The final designs also stay together well (as long as you have ironed them properly) and will last for years as decorations for your Christmas tree!!!
All in all, I think these are a great creative 'toy' but should come in 'adult kits' to stop me feeling like a kid when I play with it!!!!