When we shopped at Michael’s last week, I picked up a box of Perler beads and it was one of the best $8 toys we have purchased.  I started the project with Logan a few days ago; it took both of us a little bit of time to get the hang of it.  I gave Logan some guidance while he built his first knight, but it was a bit stressful as I did not do a good job ironing it and he had to end up re-building half of it.  We finally got his first knight, a shield and a base completed together, and he loved it.  Since then, he has been making a knight each day and he is totally on his own building the entire set.  He follows the instruction to make the correct shapes but he improvises a little bit with the colors and designs.  He gave the knights cool boots and nice swords, and he also made up a crossbow all on his own.  Logan is so excited about them that he had cleaned out an area on his nightstand to prepare for his troop. 

     For the first few days, Connor did not pay much attention to what we were doing except looking at Logan’s final result.  But last night he asked to make one, so Logan and I got him started on making a dinosaur (or a dragon as the set calls it).  Connor understood that he could not finish it last night, so he told us that he would work on it first thing this morning.  And Connor remembered!  He asked for it as soon as he got up this morning, but I convinced him to wait until after breakfast.  Connor asked for help a lot while he was building, but after just verbal encouragement, he finished building the dinosaur all on his own.  He did a good job making up the color combination.  I guided him to build the base, then Connor was very proud to show off his first dinosaur to Logan and Stuart.  Before bedtime tonight, Connor started his next project which is building a knight while Logan makes his first dinosaur.