We have been warming up for present and card opening by working on fine motor skills with some threading activities!
We tried threading beads onto sticks a little while ago, and this is an activity we repeat quite often now.
We made this pattern together but Annabelle got the hang of it really quickly and had a go at her own independently.
I love how much opportunity this provides for talk about colours, shades, shapes, patterns and reasoning “I think I’ll make a blue, red, blue, red pattern” or “I love this bead because it’s just so sparkly!” (nothing wrong with a bit of sparkle!)
We also bought some of these letter beads on Amazon which have provided us with loads of fun writing silly messages and threading them onto laces.
Letter beads
The beads themselves are actually quite tricky to thread as the holes are quite small, but we have used them for sorting and matching games as well as threading. They came with lots of laces in the tub, so we also used the laces to thread our round beads.
Carefully selecting beads
Concentrating so hard!
More opportunities for lots of counting, colour, pattern and sequencing chat!
Next on our bead crafting journey we are going to try making some of these lovely candy cane tree ornaments that I found on Pinterest. They are so simple – just threading beads onto a pipe cleaner, but they look lovely and I know Annabelle will love getting her beads out again!
My kids would have loved those letter beads as much as they enjoyed the simple beads for the candy cane ornaments! I hope you enjoy making them and appreciate the link!