First, take your drinking straw and your duct tape. Rip off a piece of duct tape and wrap it around the straw. You can use just a little, or a lot and wrap it many times -- the more times you wrap it, the thicker your bead will be!

Continue wrapping your straw with tape.

Keep going until the entire straw is covered in colorful tape!

You can make different patterns with different color or pattern tape, and you can even cut up your tape into smaller strips to create patterns that way. Here, I've cut some narrower strips that I've wrapped on the diagonal, leaving gaps in which you can see the tape below. Experiment and have fun!

Once your straw is completely wrapped and decorated to your heart's content, use your scissors to snip the straw into beads. You can have small beads that are 1/4 of an inch, medium beads that are 1/2 an inch, or large beads that are 1 inch long. I suggest mixing it up, and making beads of all different lengths!

Now you've got a ton of beautiful beads to create with!

While there are many ways to string your beads, here's a simple one to get you started. Take one bead, and tie it with a knot at the end of your yarn or string. (While you can cut your yard to be different lengths, I recommend cutting it to 3 feet so that you have enough room to bead, tie, and slip the necklace on and off.)

If you'll be doing our Reward Bead activity, you need to keep your string untied (that is, not knotted into a closed loop necklace) while you're still adding on new beads! You'll also want to create a loop so that you can hang your beads on your chore chart. Simply loop the opposite end of the string and tie it with a single knot. Make sure that the knot is small enough that beads can still slip over it.

Once you've beaded your necklace (or have completed the chores on your chart!), you can knot the beaded string into a beautiful necklace and wear it with pride!