craftgrrl | Earrings without tools?

Hey everyone, I'm in need of a little advice.

My coworker and I are teaching a jewelry making after school class for 3-5th graders. So far we've done friendship bracelets, stringing beads on stretch magic, and sewing beads to fabric cuffs made by cutting up old socks. We haven't done anything involving using any tools, and hadn't really planned on it. Hemp jewelry was our inspiration for the class, so we started from that idea. But, some of the girls are begging to do earrings, and I was wondering if anyone knew of any techniques for making earrings that doesn't involve wire cutters or pliers?

We are on a tight budget, $1 per kid per week, so $15 a week, and even if we could buy just one set of tools, I'm not sure the logistics of sharing one tool between 15 kids would really work out. Alternately, as a result of doing so much research to come up with project ideas for the kids, I've been inspired to get more into jewelry making, and I may invest in some tools myself. If I did that, does anyone know of any projects that had minimal tool use, like, the kids could do everything that didn't involve tools, then bring the project up to me to finish it? Even if we could get a decent number of tools, this is what they would probably do anyway, because they don't trust themselves to even tie a knot half the time. 3rd-5th grade has a wide range of maturity and patience levels :)

And, to share a little bit of my own, here are some pictures of some hemp jewelry I've made lately. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping on getting a part time job soon (my full time job is an AmeriCorps position, so I have a looow living stipend), so I can get some new beads and start trying more designs! I always tell myself that applying at craft or yarn stores is useless because they probably already have enough people - who wouldn't want to work there? But yesterday I decided to ditch that attitude, write up a resume that highlights my knitting and jewelry experience, and then apply to every yarn shop and bead shop in Minneapolis. It couldn't hurt, right? Anyway, sorry for all the babbling...here are pictures!

edited to add: If you'd like to see the friendship bracelets I made to test out my skills before teaching the class, check out my blog