Beading is always a favourite activities for young children, and there’s nothing nicer than sweet beads you can eat — such as Fruit Loops. Our hostess Katrina had a box of the breakfast cereal sitting on her shelf for this activity and during our visit brought it down for the girls to turn into jewellery.

The first step was to sort the fruit loops into bowls of different colours. This would seem to be a straight-forward activity, but out-of-the-box, gradual colour variations means there's quite a bit of discernment necessary to determine if a circle is one colour or another.

Nicely sorted, the "beads" are ready for threading.

It's very hard to keep from nibbling the fruit loops as they sit enticingly in their bowls, so we didn't even try to restrain the children — trusting that there would still be enough to make into necklaces.

Katrina threaded elastic thread with plastic needles to make the beading easier. Remember to tie a fruit loop at the far end of the string/elastic so your "beads" don't all fall off!

Brioni models her creation. She chose to use just two tones of colours.

After choosing the colours she wants to use, Shanay carefully threads her loops onto the elastic.

Aisha really enjoyed making a colourful necklace. As we travel around, it's a blessing to be able to learn from other families' crafty ideas.

As soon as it was around her neck, Bethany started to eat the beads off the elastic.

Calista couldn't wait to eat her necklace, either.

Our girls have never eaten Fruit Loops before — this was a real treat. If you’re concerned about the colours and sugar content, Cheerios are another option. We’ve tried that in the past, although most of them were eaten pretty quickly!

Mummycraft factor: 2. Perhaps a mummy is necessary to cut the elastic, thread the needle and tie the ends. However, everything else can easily be handled by an average 4yo. Younger children have no problem threading fruit loops, so if your 2yo isn’t particularly hungry, this activity would be great for them too! (The Mummycraft factor tells you how much of the craft the mummy ends up doing. 10 is full-on-Mummy-does-the-craft and 0 is walk-away-and-come-back-to-a-finished-craft.)