Homeschool Crew Review: Zirrly

Zirrly has sold arts and crafts supplies since 1956.  They strive to stir children's imagination and help them be creative while improving fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.  My children, especially my girls, love to do all kinds of crafts.  I knew they would be very excited to receive our latest review product, Super Beads from Zirrly.  We had an opportunity to use and review the Jungle Animals set.

Super Beads are colorful beads that can be used to make designs that stick together using only water.  There are several different kits available such as: Jungle Animals, 3 D Animals, Birds, 3 D Car and Truck, Spinning Tops, Jewelry Set, and Mega Pack.  This review will focus on the Jungle Animals.

In the Jungle Animals set you will find:

6 Plastic Boards to build your designs on
6 design templates-lion, rhino, elephant, zebra, owl, and monkey
1 design tool
1 spray bottle
Plastic Work Tray
Super Beads-(the box says 2000+) yellow, blue, red, orange, white, black, brown, green
Instruction Book

The only other thing you need to complete the designs is water.  Jungle Animals is recommended for ages 5 and up.  You can purchase Jungle Animals for $24.99.


Our package arrived on a cold and yucky Saturday morning.  The girls (6 and 8) wanted to dive right in and start making the Jungle Animals.  Lily started with the owl, and Emmie made the Zebra, following the design template for each.

Once you have all the beads on the board, you press down the beads, carefully remove the template, and spray them down with water from the water bottle.  Then you let them dry for around 60 minutes and  carefully remove them from the board using the design tool.  Flip the design over and spray the other side.  Once dry you are finished.

After making the black and white zebra, Emmie decided she wanted to make a different color zebra, and after that made a whole family of zebras.  Lily also made a family of owls. 

The boys (10 and 12) wanted to make something with the Super Beads as well.  They wanted to try their own design and make a Minecraft family.

By the end of the day we had a whole crew of Jungle Animals and this family.  Between the four of them they used the entire set of beads in one day.

They LOVED the Super Beads!  The included templates in the kits were great to get them started while still allowing for creativity in color and design.  They had no trouble placing the beads on the boards.  The trickiest part when getting started was knowing how much water to use.  I let the girls spray down their first designs on their own, but when I went back to take them off, the beads had not connected.  I think after I warned them to be careful not to use too much water they did not spray enough. I sprayed them down myself and waited another 60 minutes and had no trouble getting them off, they stuck together perfectly.  The first time Christian (10) sprayed his design he used way to much water and they turned into a mushy mess that never did dry.  The second time I sat with him while he sprayed and it turned out perfect.  Once you get the idea of how much water to use it is really easy and they had no trouble.  I absolutely loved that all you needed was water to make them stick!  No ironing required!  I also loved that the beads were packaged into smaller packages so we didn't have to have them all opened at the same time and could open them as needed.  The little water bottle that was included was great and the tool to lift the designs off of the board was very helpful.  The designs are flexible and even after playing with them have held together really well.

We had a lot of fun with our Super Beads and would love to purchase more kits in the future!

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!