These Beach-Inspired Lacing Cards Will Keep Your Kids Occupied This Summer
Do you want to teach your preschooler this summer without spending a lot of money on new materials, but still get them learning and having fun?
You're in luck! I've got just the thing for you.
Printable lacing cards provide an activity that's great for developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
It also helps with hand control and figuring out just how your hands and muscles work, an essential skill for writing, which comes later for most preschoolers and toddlers.
This activity is perfect for those hot summer days when you don't want to spend too much time outside in the heat.
My summer 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.
Some of the links below are affiliate links. That means I may make a commission if you click and buy. Please see my full disclosure policy for more information.
Welcome to day 9 of my 10 Days of Summer Printables for Preschoolers! If you're interested in grabbing the other days, click the link and go back and grab them all. Can you believe it's Day 9 already? We have had so much fun the last two weeks.
You will be pleasantly surprised how many amazing sets we are giving away, and how much you can do with each set. Click around and see what I am offering, like in this post, you'll see different variations and ways you can use each printable. Also! You can check out the rest of the bloggers who are also giving away products, or talking about summer learning. It's all in that link, so go ahead and click over if you're interested, it's also linked at the very bottom of this post for your convenience.
Off we go now, into summer lacing fun.
Grab a book from our list of top ocean books for preschoolers to take this craft to the next level!
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.
My summer lacing cards can be used as a fun activity with kids that will keep them engaged so you can get something done!
These cards are perfect for summer because they have the MOST adorable summer art on them, which we have in all of the printables we have given out this week. They feel so summery, with seashells, sea stars, and sand castles.
Although my family doesn't live anywhere near the beach anymore, it is still wonderful to find ways to bring the beach back into our lives.
Lacing Cards Printable, How to Prepare:
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 wiggles under control.
That's normal.
So I like to get all of the laminating and cutting out of the way before I bring this out to them.
Let's keep that chaos out of our life and just prepare this ahead of time. I like to print everything the night before, laminate them, and have everything ready to go when I bring this out to my children for usage.
For these cards it will take a little bit of preparation. You'll need to print, laminate, cut, and then hole punch. You will also need string.
If you'd like to DIY this, you can also use yarn and add tape firmly to the end of each side to make it easier to lace through.
Speaking of laces, you can use so many different types of string for this. Yard with tape, shoelaces, ribbon, or even lacing string. I linked a few in the list below.
Here is the list of everything you need.
-The free printables (OF COURSE!) grab it here:
–A laminator– If you want to keep these printables around as long as you can, so I recommend laminating the pages so you can get the most use out of them. If you plan to use these for scissor skills, then there is no need to laminate them.
-Scissors- I have always had a difficult time with letting my kids use scissors, but since my son has been home for preschool this year, we have embraced the scissor skills, even though I'm still genuinely terrified he will find them and cut off his beautiful curly hair. We all fear kids with scissors, right?
–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 (which I don't think you need this summer!) 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.
PIN for later:
Prepare Your Summer Lacing Card Printable:
-gather supplies: your pages, laminator, scissors, and hole punch.
-laminate all the pages.
-cut out each of the shapes, you can leave some white space around them to make them more sturdy.
-punch holes in all of the dots around the edge of each card.
Then boom! You're ready!
Interested in more summer fun printables? Check out my shop, where you can find SO much more than what I offered here! Thank you for supporting my family. To access the shop, click the image below!
How to Use Your New Summer Lacing
These summertime lacing card pages were created 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.
You can ask your child which way they would prefer too.
Another way you can use those fine motor skill is to trace them with your fingers, or different sized markers to connect the dots.
I love to let my kids take the lead with printables, and tell me how they would like to interact with it. I've learned so much from letting them see the products as I am making them, and they help me shape them into something I wouldn't have thought of.
Summer Lacing Printable – Made Easier
You can make these work younger kids, you can talk about the pictures. So you can identify what shape you see in each image, and talk about what each beach object is.
With younger kids try not to focus too much on them putting together the lacing exactly as it should be done. Just focus on getting the string into the holes.
I stay close when they are first introduced to lacing cards because I want to be there in case they feel frustrated, which is SO EASY when they're first learning these skills.
Name an object, and have your child show you where it is in front of you. When they name the object correctly, they can lace that card.
This printable is great for fine motor skills, but it's also SUPER awesome at identifying and tracing, we love talking these things out with my four year old. He sometimes connects the dots with markers, like a dot to dot puzzle.
Adapt Lacing Cards For Preschoolers – Made Harder
If they're already efficient at lacing, you can encourage them to lace in order around the image, or focus on the pattern, for example they can lace forward, then down. Or lace one, then skip one.
We like to race, with no prizes of course, but it's fun to see who would finish first. It is a cute way to add competition to a fun printable.
I love encouraging their creativity, and getting them to create a picture based on four little pieces is a great way to do that.
Other Ways to Learn with Lacing Cards
The thing I love about these cards is how much my kids love them. We encourage a lot of questions and discussions, and the adorable art on these encourages lots of questions. Have you ever seen a shell look like this? What do you think a family of shells would look like?
What is the name of this?
Oh, a beach ball? What do you know about beach balls? Do you know any songs about beach balls? Maybe we can ask Alexa if she knows any fun facts about beach balls!
There are so many different ways to bring learning into your every day life with your child.
What Will Kids Learn?
Fine motor skills and concentration. My kids are huge fans of the cute art, so it leads to lots of discussions, and what they think about certain things.
It's an important skill to be able to grab string in your fingers, and learn how to move the string with your hands correctly, so they can successfully lace the string into the cards.
Get the Printable Here
Here is another opportunity go grab that printable. I know it will be a favorite! Grab it here:
Just put your information in, and you'll receive an email from me immediately to download.
Be sure you check out our full collection of summer themed printables in the shop!
The thing I love about printables for preschoolers is how it helps them use their ands to interact with letters, numbers, and shapes. I love when they can cut up papers, or squish play doh between their fingers. I began this journey to create more for my preschooler so I could keep him occupied without putting a screen in front of his face. It was so tempting, and so easy, so I decided to start making things, so these printables were MORE easy, and MORE tempting. I like bright colors and fun art on them, so you will be sure to get that from all of my printables. I'm glad you're here, and I hope you love what you see, and come back for more, it would mean the world to me.
For more free printables this week, be sure to check out this post with links to all of the freebies.
