The Most Beautiful Thanksgiving Lacing Cards of All Time
Inside you'll find the most adorable Thanksgiving Lacing Card Printable for practicing fine motor skills you've ever seen. These watercolor beauties are just what you need to keep little hands busy this Thanksgiving so you can get things done!
Are you looking for a fun way to help your child practice their fine motor skills?
These Thanksgiving Lacing Cards are the perfect activity to do together. They’re themed around fall foliage and harvest season, and Thanksgiving! Your child will love lacing up these festive 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 in school.
These cards can be used as part of a Thanksgiving party or just for your little one to play with when they need something new.
There are so many benefits of doing activities like this one with your children. Not only does it give them an opportunity to work on developing their fine motor skills, but it also gives them an opportunity to learn about new things while spending quality time with you. You can even use these cards as part of a homeschooling Thanksgiving curriculum.
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.
Looking for more Thanksgiving Preschool Activities? 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 beautiful watercolor lacing cards can be used as a fun activity with kids that will keep them engaged so you can get something done . . . like cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
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.
My watercolor Thanksgiving 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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Helpful Supplies for Lacing Cards this Thanksgiving
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.
If you're doing these at home or in the classroom, I recommend getting everything put together the night before.
If your little one is at home with you, I recommend using yarn for lacing instead of string because it’s thicker and easier to hold onto for little hands.
You can purchase inexpensive skeins of yarn that will last for many turkey projects from Michaels. Wrap the ends with tape to reduce fraying, making them easier to work with.
If you're doing this in the classroom, 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.
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: Thanksgiving Lacing Cards.
–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.
-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 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.
-Zipper Pouch or Task Card Box – This is a great place to hold all the pieces together.
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How to Use Thanksgiving Lacing Cards
These lacing cards are easy 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 Thanksgiving Sewing Cards can be used again next year or for autumn 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.
For task boxes, you can print them all, laminate, cut them out, hole punch, and store them in the boxes with a few shoelaces.
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 costumed kid.
- 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 this Printable with Your Children
There may be some hesitation at first, 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 navigate whatever you’re using; yarn, ribbon, or a shoelace, through the holes.
- You can encourage them to alternate the holes they use, or let them do whatever their heart desires.
- After they've gone through each hole, you can tie the ends together to complete the pattern!
- 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.
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What Benefits do Lacing Cards Have For Kids?
These cards 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.
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.
There may be some hesitation at first, but once they get started kids will enjoy the challenge of lacing Halloween cards and it’s great for hand-eye coordination too!
This is also a fantastic activity for groups of children since it includes so many different Lacing Cards.
Other Fun Ways to Use This Thanksgiving Activity for Kids
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 when they would see this objects in their everyday lives.
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 one of the objects represented, like turkey, and have your child show you where it is in front of you. When they name the object correctly, they can lace that card.
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.
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 pie look like this? What do you think a family of turkeys would look like?
What is the name of this?
Oh, a leaf? What do you know about leaves? Do you know any songs about leaves? Maybe we can ask Alexa if she knows any fun facts about leaves!
There are so many different ways to bring learning into your every day life with your child.
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