There are some pretty obvious pros and cons to the Made By Me Shoelace Bracelet Making Set once you get the package open and start to play around with it. I’ll start with the cons:
- There’s a lot of wasted material in the packaging. The plastic bag with the beads and shoelaces was pretty small in comparison to the cardboard box they came in.
- The kit is really lacking when it comes to the letters. Once my daughter spelled her name, we could not come up with too many other words she could use on the other bracelets (there is enough in the kit to make seven bracelets). Yes, she has a long name, but there were very few vowels left when we were done. Her name has two vowels—not two of the same one, either.
The pros:
- The beads are colorful and inspire pattern creation. There are a few different shapes, too, so it can be really fun to use, even without letters.
- The shoelaces make it easy to thread the beads on, and the laces are so thick, the beads won’t automatically fall back off of the other end if you forget to tie a knot in there first. That’s more than I can say for a lot of other kits and materials I might find separately in the arts and crafts stores.
Overall, I think the set was worth the money (around $6), so I can’t complain too much. I just wish they’d included more letters so we could have made up more words. We’re working on reading, writing, and spelling right now, so anything that helps with that gets extra points in my book.
Still, I really do appreciate the pattern-making possibilities and the fact that she won’t get frustrated within a minute or so because the beads fall off the other end. She doesn’t need to ask me to tie a knot before she gets started.
Photo credit: Target
