These fuse beads have been a great hit with the older children in my daycare as well as my own 2 sons who are slightly older. They are quite fiddly so need a lot of patience and coordination. Some children needed to take a break and continue later, but were very proud of their final results.The bucket comes with 6000 mixed color beads. I'm assuming it's 6000 because that's what the label says - I didn't actually count them!We have had creations been made every day this week. Most of the children filled out the shapes that came with the kit, but some started getting more creative, making up their own shapes and creations using the shape boards that come with it. It's easy to fuse the beads together. You just iron over the beads putting the paper that comes with the kit between the iron and the beads. I iron the one side, and when I see they are sticking together, I take the creation off the shape board, turn it over, and put the paper on top and iron it again. I iron them on a wooden bread board as I don't want to have an ironing board out all day to iron their creations. By ironing on both sides, it melts the beads together on both sides and we like how it looks. The beads are hot after ironing so I have to push the paper off with the shape board.