Lacing cards are sometimes shaped like animals or toys, but oftentimes they are just rectangular cards. Simple flash cards also make exciting, educational lacing cards. Use letter or number flash cards for preschoolers; these typically have a letter on one side and a picture of something that starts with that letter on the other. If they are number cards, one side will show the number and the other side will have a picture of that many of an object. Using a hole punch, place holes about 1 inch apart around the edge of each card. As your preschooler laces each card with yarn, discuss with her the letter or number on the card. She will learn while fine-tuning her hand-eye coordination.
Lace the letters with your preschoolers to help improve motor skills and master the alphabet at the same time. Use this educational activity suggested at the website Education.com to create a beautiful classroom display.
Instruct your preschoolers to write the alphabet on large pieces of colored foam, assigning each student a few of the letters. Help each child cut out his letters. The children will then mark dots along the perimeter of each letter with a pencil. Punch a hole on each dot with a hole punch. Help your preschoolers use yarn to lace the letters in the order that they would write them; for example, start an A at the top point and lace down the left side, then start at the top again and lace down the right side, and finish by lacing across the middle. Discuss each letter as it is laced, making the letter's sound and naming words that start with that letter.
Help children create beautiful art projects while teaching them to lace and tie. Cut shapes out of cardstock to correspond with a specific holiday or event; use snowmen and evergreens for winter, suns and beach balls for summer, rainbows and flowers for spring, or cakes and party hats for a birthday. DLTK's Growing Together website offers templates of leaves, footballs and apples to celebrate autumn. Use a hole punch to make holes around the perimeter of the shape, roughly 1 inch apart. The preschoolers will do a running stitch through all of the holes and then tie the two ends together where they meet.
To create a pouch, have the children lace two of the same shape together, leaving a space at the top where there are no holes punched. The laces will be tied twice, once on either side of the pouch opening. For a more advanced project, DLTK's Growing Together recommends using foam instead of cardstock and adding a ribbon strap to the top of the pouch to turn it into a purse.
They may simply mean playtime to preschoolers, but lacing toys will teach children a valuable skill and strengthen their hand-eye coordination. Some lacing toys come as a play set of wooden characters; the children will lace around the edges before playing with the characters. Others include a large toy shoe on which children can practice lacing and tying, a doll with lace-up clothes, and special boards on which children lace detailed pictures with colored yarn.