(Pictures of a paper bead being rolled on a wire)Last weekend I got to spend some precious hours with my Grandniece Karmen. She is 5 years old and wanted dearly to make some beads 
with me. She did great! Not exactly to the standards I hold myself to for selling but for a 5 year old - GREAT!
with me. She did great! Not exactly to the standards I hold myself to for selling but for a 5 year old - GREAT!She loves to cut with scissors so I had her cut straight lines in colored type paper to make tube beads. She rolled the beads up on plastic coffee stir sticks that I got at Costco (5,000 for a price that was around something like $6.00 -cheap by any measure). I like to have children use plastic straws or plastic stir sticks (they are a bit thinner than straws) because they are much easier for small hands to handle, they can't hurt themselves with them like they might with a piece of wire and the beads come easily off the plastic even after the glue has dried.
(Thick glossy paper is hard even for adults to roll, let the kids use thinner, non-glossy paper like tissue paper to start out on.)
(tube beads made with straight pieces of paper. I like about 3/4" to 1" in paper width for kids.)
One trick - don't use any glue until the bead is nearly completely rolled. Just the very end piece is glued. That keeps the glue from getting out of control and makes them easier to adjust if the rolling goes crazy and to get off of the straw.
The more my grand-niece tried at rolling, the better she got. The beads got tighter and tighter. But one thing about paper beads is that the look good no matter how they are rolled!
We didn't dip any beads in poly-acrylic and I would not recommend that until kids are much older. Besides, beads made at this age are not meant to be handed down generation after generation!
Even my 2 year old niece wanted to help string on the beads. Again I was amazed at her concentration as she tried to get the Tigerwire through the holes! - and she succeeded several times. The Tigerwire is stiff so she could aim for several second without it drooping which make is a much more pleasant product to use than string or yarn for young people! Just please monitor young people with the Tigerwire so they don't accidentally poke their eyes! (Tigerwire is a brand name for wire that is actually made of several strands of wire twisted together and then coated with a plastic.)
I use Tigerwire just because it is so dang sturdy. I don't put a clasp on a necklace for young children - just make the necklace large enough to go over their head. Put a loop with a crimp bead on one end of the strand, and then loop the other end through the first loop and with a crimp bead securely hold that second loop together. Beautiful intertwined loop closure!
