Manipultives

I have noticed while teaching applied and university high school level science classes that many students choose not to use manipulatives when presented with them, even those who would benefit from them. There have been multiple reasons why students choose not to use the manipulatives, some say that it is because it takes too long, they would rather not understand and rush through the assignment/task then take the time to understand. Two weeks ago I used beads and a template. I used this to be used to show Bohr-Rutherford diagrams and later how ions are formed. I did an example on the overhead and then asked the class to make four of their own. Many of the students didn't open the bags of beads at all instead they just drew what they thought was right. Tomorrow I will be using manipulatives again to teach balancing equations. I am hoping that this lesson goes better, but I was wondering if anybody had ways to make manipulatives more fun, and actually used for learning?