Lacing cards are a great activity for young children to strengthen fine motor skills. They are a great way to practice hand-eye coordination and a fun way to perfect the pincer grasp. You can make your own lacing cards in a few simple steps.
Pick your favorite fun shape and get started today. Shapes include:
- sun
- leaf
- ladybug
- flower
- chick
- butterfly
- mushroom
How to Make the Lacing Cards
- Print the fun Spring lacing cards onto card stock.
- Cut out the different shapes.
- Glue the shapes onto cardboard like the back of a cereal box so it is sturdier. Then, cut the shape out again.
- Your child can help you punch holes with a hole puncher or for young preschoolers give it to them with pre-punched holes. The cardboard might be too thick for their little hands to punch through.
Materials to Lace in the Cards
Once your DIY lacing cards are made, you are ready to collect items to lace with. Look for items that you already have on hand or that you can find at a dollar store.
The goal is that the children learn the movement of sewing. Up, down, up, down or over, under, over, under. Of course that isn’t the most important goal of using lacing cards. Really you are just providing a fun activity for them to strengthen hand eye coordination and fine motor skills. So if they don’t just lace around the outside and instead go back and forth over the fun shape, that is ok. It doesn’t matter. With older preschoolers who have experimented with it on their own for awhile, you can show them how to go around the outside by going up and down to make a stitch.
Yarn
You can use a piece of yarn. If you use yarn, lace the bottom end through a hole and tie it in a knot. That way the yarn will always be there and you won’t lose it. On the other end of the yarn, add a piece of tape. Roll it around the end almost like a needle. This will keep the yarn from fraying and makes it easier to lace through the holes.
Shoe Laces
Using a shoe lace is a great idea. The plastic end is perfect for lacing. Put the bottom of the shoe lace through a hole and tie it in a knot. That way the lacing doesn’t come undone by the shoe lace coming all of the way through the hole.
Pipe Cleaners
Pipe cleaners are a fantastic way to start with lacing for young children. They are straight and don’t flop around so they are easier to control. Kids can take a long pipe cleaner and lace it through as many holes as they can. Or you can cut pipe cleaners in half for them to lace through each hole (one per hole) and then bend and twist them.
They can make a pattern with the colored pipe cleaners or sort and put all of one color on one side and the other color on the other. The possibilities are endless and so much fun. Sometimes it can be a pain to untwist and unbend the pipe cleaners to get them out. If this is the case, challenge. your child or student to get them out. This will work their finger muscles too.
This hands-on activity is a great addition to a busy bag. It is one of our favorite fine motor activities for traveling in the car.
Download the Free Printable Lacing Cards
Looking for more Spring printables for your little learners? We’ve got you covered.
These free printables include activities to practice counting, matching, fine motor skills, sequencing, and number recognition all with a bee theme. Some children are scared of bees. We hope that these preschool bee games will open up the conversation about how important bees are to our lives and how we need to protect them.
These preschool bird activities include puzzles, dice games, scissors practice, and more! Observe and identify birds in your back yard along with these free bird printables. How do birds build a nest? What do birds eat? There are so many things to discover about birds.
Preschool Butterfly Printables
From puzzles and patterning to color matching and tracing, these free butterfly activities will be a hit this Spring with your preschoolers. Children love to look for and observe colorful butterflies. Along with these printables, you can buy caterpillars to watch them change into butterflies. It is such a neat and valuable experience for kids of all ages.
Use qtips to paint a butterfly, sun, cloud, flower, rainbow, cloud, or tree. Using qtips to paint with encourages the use of a pincer grasp which is important for writing. Hand-eye coordination and perseverance also come into play with these free printables.
Practice letter recognition of capital letters in this ladybug alphabet matching activity. This is a great way to informally assess what letters your children can identify.
If your children or students are interested in certain animals or insects, check out these free life cycle printables to learn more about them. Life cycles are fascinating for children of all ages.