Do-It-Yourself Lacing Cards-Shapes

Fine motor is something necessary to develop in early childhood. It is important to do fine motor activities in order to enhance prewriting skills in small children.   One activity for developing fine motor skills is the use of lacing cards.  You may have seen lacing cards in the store.  I am going to show you how we made our own at home using recycled material.

What You Need:

Empty Cereal Boxes
Paint/Paintbrushes
Hole Punch
Black Sharpie
Ribbon

What You Do:

I decided a fun way to reinforce my kid's knowledge of shapes and help with their fine motor skills would be to make homemade lacing cards.  I started thinking about recycling cardboard and what we could use it for a while ago.  One day I noticed I had all this extra cardboard in the form of a ton of cereal boxes.  We eat a lot of cereal.  Cereal boxes are good for lacing cards because the cardboard is thin. 

So, I traced and hand drew a few shapes using the black Sharpie on the inside of a cereal box after I had opened it up to where I could work on the inside.  After I drew the shapes, I wrote the name of the shape in black sharpie so it would show up clearly through the paint.

Next, I let my children paint the shapes.  They used watercolors, which kind of gave the cards an antique type look to them.  They turned out very nice. 

After that, using a single hole punch, I punched holes all the way around the card, each hole being about 3/4 inch to 1 inch apart.

For my lacing string, I decided to use ribbon.  I found ribbon at Walmart that measured 1/4 inch in width and 10 yards in length for 50 cents a roll.  I cut about 2 ft (24 inches) of ribbon to lace with.  To make the ribbon easier to thread, I folded the ends of the ribbon together and wrapped a little piece of clear tape around the end.

Voila!  You are ready to lace.  Hope you enjoy this activity.  It is one your children can really make their own.

How do you recycle your cereal boxes?