Adventures in Lacing!

We've been working on lacing a lot lately, a great indoor activity to do (and make!)

I love to see my older child helping my younger child, and we've been enjoying some quiet together time on the couch before bed in the evenings cuddled together, practicing our lacing.

First off, why lacing?  It helps develop your child's 'pincer grip' which can help with writing.  Other good pincer grip activities include stringing beads, tongs and other transfer activities like tweezers, clothespins, pegs and pegboards, lacing a shoe or lacing frame, and basically anything where the child uses their thumb and forefinger to manipulate the objects.  I find it also does wonders in working on patience, and mutli-tasking as lacing can be a complicated concept at first.  The child has to concentrate on guiding the lace while also thinking about patterning (in & out, up & down), direction, and shapes/colors.

We have purchased a few sets of commercial lacing cards, including:

 Melissa & Doug Lace and Trace Shapes

 and this set of Eric Carle Animal Lacing Cards: 10 Cards & Laces.  Both sets are sturdy, thick cardboard, and I like that the Eric Carle set has patterns with increasing difficulty. 

We have been happy with both of these sets, and there are many more choices out there.

You can make your own custom lacing cards by printing out a picture or using a die cut shape, laminating it, and punching holes in your desired design.  Use a shoelace or yarn (with a taped end) with a knot at one end for lacing.  You can also tie on a button or a bead on the end of the lace/yarn to prevent the end from traveling through the first hole. 

I've included some links for free printable lacing cards below:

This site has a lot of printable cards- just scroll down a little and click on your desired card for a printable pdf file.  You hole-punch your own design.

Yellow Mums has this free printable lace-up doll pdf.  So cute!!  Just choose the outfit and lace it on the doll.

{Photo by Yellow Mums}

Update 11.18.10!  Yellow Mums just posted an adorable fabric envelope tutorial to make for pretty storage for your lacing dolls.  See it here!!  She also hints she may be posting more outfits in the future.  If she does, I will add them here as well.

11.19.10: Yellow Mums has posted the winter doll lace up clothing as her Freebie Friday.
You can find them here.
Thank you Yellow Mums!

Mini-Eco has these adorable lacing/sewing cards for printing.

{Photo from mini-eco blog}

Print out these lacing cards in a duck, mouse, frog, snake, or bug from Making Learning Fun.

I love this tutorial on making lacing cookies (you can also make lacing salt dough shapes using the same techniques) from Fifth Wizardy (photo is from their blog posting).

Download sets of uppercase and lowercase alphabet letters with patterns or in black & white to use for lacing at Home Grown Hearts.  They also offer this set of number lacing cards.

Homemaker has a great idea to cut off the fronts of old greeting cards, laminate, and hole punch for really neat lacing card designs.  What a great way to reuse!

It gives me the idea to reuse children's or scientific book pages by laminating them and punching hole designs.  Hmmmm, the possibilities are endless!!!
♥