A fun way to work on fine motor skills is with the use of lacing cards. These Easter egg lacing cards are easy to make yourself and can work on many different skills!
This activity does not only works on fine motor skills, but on hand eye coordination, visual perception and visual discrimination skills too. All these skills are needed for reading and writing, so the earlier (in preschool and kindergarten) children develop these, the better.
Cut egg shapes from the foam or cardboard and decide how many holes you want.
I changed the blue egg to shape matching for my 3 year old and used 4 different shapes with two holes each (thus 8 holes punched). For the numbers egg, I punched 10 holes.
Write the numbers (or whatever you decide on) on the egg at the holes. I deliberately wrote the numbers going from left to right, throwing in some pre-writing exercise too. Before I gave these lacing cards to the kids, I stuck one end of the string to the back of the card to keep it in place.
Lacing Cards at Work!
My 5.5 year old got started on the lacing cards by starting at 1, weaving in and out to 2, to 3, and so on until the egg was complete!
With the shape matching egg, I drew the shapes in no specific order, since the focus here was purely fine motor and visual skills.
This lacing activity seems simple, but a child uses several practical thinking skills in this activity. They need to not only know where to lace the string through, but also to go in from one side and out the other.
Another great thing about this activity is that it’s easy to rectify when not exactly pleased with the results – simply pull out the string and start over!
More Ways to Use Lacing Cards
Instead of numbers or shapes, try some of these ideas, depending on what your child needs!
letters (match upper and lowercase, abc order, etc)
skip counting (by 5’s, 10’s, etc)
rhyming words
Number order from a specific number on (not starting at 1)
Nadia is a South African mom to two littles, a former preschool teacher, and currently working as a reading therapist at a remedial school. She blogs over at Teach me Mommy about easy and playful activities inspiring you to be your child's first teacher. You can see more of her ideas on Pinterest and Instagram.
Nadia is a South African mom to two littles, a former preschool teacher, and currently working as a reading therapist at a remedial school. She blogs over at Teach me Mommy about easy and playful activities inspiring you to be your child's first teacher. You can see more of her ideas on Pinterest and Instagram.
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