Colorful and Fun Bug Lacing Cards for Preschoolers
Inside you'll find the most adorable Bug Themed Lacing Cards for practicing fine motor skills with preschoolers you've ever seen. These happy little beauties are just what you need to keep those little hands busy and work on fine motor hand muscles!
Are you looking for a cute and engaging way to help your child practice their fine motor skills?
These Insect Lacing Cards are the perfect activity to do together. They’re themed around my son's current favorite thing. Bugs. They gross me out though, so I found some adorable bugs that seem less threatening.
Your child will love lacing up these not-at-all-creepy-or-crawly cards with you. It’s such a great way to spend time together while also helping them develop important skills that they need later on for writing.
These cards can be used as part of an insect, spring, or gardening curriculum.
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What are the Benefits of Lacing Cards?
The main benefit of lacing cards is using those fine motor skills muscles that are vitally important later on when children start writing and typing. I also love the opportunity to spend time with my children while we lace these butterflies and bugs together.
Lacing cards allow preschoolers to practice their fine motor skills and work on hand-eye coordination. They are also a great way for parents to help increase the independence of their children, while also fostering self-confidence in them.
This set is great for talking about bugs and how most of the time they aren't harmless at all.
Looking for more printables to help prepare for kindergarten? Check out my huge list here!
Once your child understands how to do the lacing cards, they'll be able to do them independently, and practice their pincher grip any time.
These happy lacing cards can be used as a fun activity with kids that will keep them engaged.
Printable lacing cards are an activity that's great for developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. It also helps with hand strength and figuring out just how your hands and muscles work, an essential prewriting skill, which comes later for most preschoolers and toddlers.
My little bug friends lacing cards are great for preschoolers who aren't quite ready to begin learning to write. Prewriting skills are so important in their developing brains, and using a pen or marker and paper aren't the only ways to flex those pre-writing muscles.
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What Do You Need For Bug Lacing Cards
A fly swatter for sure. Ha! Just kidding, bugs are our friends, right?
As always, I recommend putting all of this together ahead of time to keep the unnecessary chaos out of our lives. New things–like this colorful and fun printable– are so exciting for kids, so it's hard to keep their excited wiggly feelings under control.
That's normal.
I like to get all of the laminating and cutting out of the way before I bring this out to them instead of print it out and put it together while they're sitting with me.
If your little one is at home with you, I recommend using yarn for lacing instead of string because it’s frankly MUCH easier to find, and when you do find it, it will be higher quality. I have such a hard time finding good strings locally.
You can purchase inexpensive skeins of yarn that will last for many projects from Michaels. Wrap the ends with tape to reduce fraying, making them easier to work with. This way they'll act more like a shoe string, and be easier to put through the holes.
I love using buttons to reinforce lacing too.
You can purchase packages of large buttons that are perfect for preschoolers (and toddlers). These will last through several holiday-themed activities and they’re big enough not to present a choking hazard for our older friends (but always keep an eye on them, of course!)
Tie a knot through the buttons to give students an “end” to their string, so they know where to stop.
Here is the list of everything you need.
-The printable (OF COURSE!) grab it here: Insect Lacing Cards.
–A laminator– If you want to keep these lacing printables around as long as you can, I recommend laminating the pages so they are more difficult to wreck.
–Lacing String– In my humble opinion, I think you should try to get the most bang for your buck. The string I linked to here is for beads AND string, because with string itself, you can either get 120 strings or you can get some strings with beads or animal shapes. This one is beads, but I also found this cool lacing string set with animals that I think any preschooler would love!
–Hole Punch– You need to punch all those holes for your child to lace the strings though. To add a little more challenge to your fine motor skills, you can have older children do the hole punching. These hole punches are so much easier than those old metal ones we had in school. Grab one!
-Zipper Pouch or Task Card Box – This is a great place to hold all the pieces together.
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How to Use Bug Friends Lacing Cards
These lacing cards are easy peasy to use.
If you have a laminator available, simply laminate the cards before use so they will last longer. This is the perfect way to ensure your insect Sewing Cards can be used again next year or for little bug themed fine motor activities all year long.
If you're using these in the classroom, print off a set of cards and let each child have their own card. This set has 12 different objects to lace, so depending on the size of your classroom, you may need to print these off twice.
You can also create task boxes, by printing them all, laminate, cut them out, hole punch, and store them in the boxes with a few shoelaces. To ensure children can access them easily and independently.
Preparing your Printable for Use
- Print the lacing cards on heavy cardstock (grab your printable here)
- Laminate then cut them out, leaving a little space around each little buggy
- You will need a single hole punch to punch the holes. Once the holes are punched, tie a knot in one end of a shoelace or lacing string. Another option is to tie a button to the end of one side of the string.
Using Your Printable Insect Lacing Cards
There may be some hesitation at first in younger children, or beginning lacers, but once they get started kids will enjoy the challenge of lacing these cards and it’s great for hand-eye coordination too!
- Now that it’s time to actually start lacing, your little one can choose their favorite string to create with; This can be yarn, ribbon, or a shoelace. Insert the string through the holes.
- I began by encouraging a certain way, for example always go left, but I found we both enjoy it more when we play however we would like.
- After they've gone through each hole, you can tie the ends together to complete the pattern, and use it for decorations.
- A tiny loop is a wonderful touch that makes it easy to display as an adorable holiday decoration, or to send home with students to showcase their work.
- For added fine motor skill practice, allow older kids to use the hole puncher to make holes around the border of the cards.
- If your child wants to keep using these cards to lace, show them how to remove the lacing string and begin again. They can spend all day on them!
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Why Lacing Cards?
I created these cards with the idea that they would be used with lacing strings as lacing cards.
This means, put simply, your child will put the string through each hole, as they see fit. This might look like a border around the outside, or across the image. There are so many ways to try this.
Since then, I've seen them used SO many different ways. You can ask your child which way they would prefer too.
These are a wonderful way to work on fine motor skills, which are an essential skill to have before beginning to write successfully. Fine motor skills help kids button and zip clothes, hold a pencil for writing, feed themselves, and more.
Other Fun Ways to Use This Insect Activity for Kids
You can make these work younger kids, you can talk about the pictures. Included are six different bugs, you can talk about how many legs they have, or what color they are, or where you might find one in the wild.
With younger children, imagine lacing cards as process art. They are very likely going to do it differently than you want them to. It's not “wrong”, it's just their way. So embrace their creativity, and give them specific compliments on their artistry.
“Wow, I love the color string you chose. Yellow looks really nice with this pink butterfly, don't you think?”
If they're already super awesome at lacing, you can encourage them to lace in order around the image, or focus on a pattern, for example they can lace “backwards”. Or lace one, then skip one.
There are so many different ways to bring learning into your every day life with your child.
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