Beaded Pipe Cleaner Trees

This easy bead lacing activity is such a fun way to keep little hands busy! It’s perfect for preschoolers ages 2–5 and gives kids a chance to practice threading, sorting, and choosing colors while working on those important fine motor skills. There’s no complicated setup, just pipe cleaners and a handful of colorful pony beads!

Parents can put the little tree together in just a few minutes with a few simple twists of brown pipe cleaners. Once the trunk and branches are ready, set out some pony beads and let the fun begin! Kids can slide the beads onto each branch, take them off, rearrange them, sort them by color, or create their own simple patterns.

Supplies Needed

4 brown pipe cleaners
a variety of colorful pony beads

Four brown pipe cleaners and a bowl of fall colored pony beads. — Note: Pony beads are small and can be a choking hazard, so this activity should always be closely supervised with young children.

Step 1Using your index finger as a placeholder, gather the pipe cleaners together and fold them in half around your finger, as shown below.

Step 2Twist the looped end of the pipe cleaners snugly around your finger, then continue twisting them together about halfway up. This will create the trunk of your tree!

Step 3Remove your finger and spread out the bottom loops to create a sturdy base. Then bend, twist, and spread the top pipe cleaners to form the tree branches.

Step 4Now for the fun part—the beads! For younger children, tape the base of the tree to the table to keep it steady and make threading easier. Older kids can simply hold the tree in place as they add their beads. To take this project even further, you could even hot glue the “roots” to a small piece of cardboard.

This simple beading activity is a fun way for preschoolers to learn while they play! Threading the beads onto the pipe cleaners helps strengthen fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, while the colorful beads are perfect for practicing color recognition, sorting, and counting. Kids can get creative with their own colors and patterns, and then do it over and over again!

You can also change the bead colors to match the season. Try orange, yellow, red, and brown for fall, pastels for spring, or red, green, and white for Christmas. Or simply dig through the craft cabinet and use whatever colors you already have! It’s an inexpensive, reusable activity that’s easy to pull out whenever your little one needs something fun to do.