10 fun activities – from letter recognition to fine motor skills
Author: Tanja Damhof
webshop owner and mother
Who says letters have to stand quietly on a worksheet? With lacing letters, you can grab them, feel them, search for them, sort them, and string them together!
The Lowercase Lacing Alphabet from Learning Resources is a material that connects language and motor skills very naturally. The letters invite you to explore, and you can endlessly vary things with the laces.
Of course, you can make words with them, but there is so much more possible. I’ll give you 10 ideas to get started with these lacing letters at home, in the classroom, or during therapy.
1. Lace your own name
A lovely first activity: find all the letters of your own name and lace them onto a string.
For young children, this is a fun way to get acquainted with letters. Name the letters while searching and, if you like, say the sounds out loud together.
You can make the activity more motorically challenging by holding the letter with one hand and threading the lace through the hole with the other.
2. Who can find their letter?
Call out a letter and have the child search for it among all the letters.
“Can you find the m?”
Do you have multiple copies of the same letter? Then have them collect all of them and lace them onto a string.
A simple activity where letter recognition, visual searching, and fine motor skills come together.
3. Alphabet in a row
Can you make the alphabet?
Mix the letters up and let the child search for them and string them in the correct order. You don’t have to start with all 26 letters at once, of course. For example, start with a through f and gradually expand the row.
For children who already know the alphabet well, you can intentionally mix up the letters and let them discover the correct order themselves.
4. Make a word
Give a simple word, such as ball, fish, moon, or tree.
Let the child find the right letters and lace the word. Say the word slowly and listen to the different sounds together.
For children who are a bit further along, you can just say the word and let them figure out which letters are needed.
This way, you practice letter recognition, sounds, spelling, and word formation through play.
5. Which letter do you hear?
Say a word, for example cat.
“Which letter do you hear at the beginning?”
Let the child look for the c. Afterward, you can also have them look for the middle or ending sound.
This is a fun way to practice the first steps toward phonological awareness, without it feeling like a language exercise.
6. Lace a pattern
You don’t have to make words with the lacing letters at all. Try making a pattern:
a – b – a – b – a – b
Can the child continue the pattern?
You can also work with colors. For example, a red letter, a blue letter, a red letter, a blue letter.
Besides motor skills, this allows you to practice pattern recognition, attention, working memory, and planning.
7. Sort first, then lace
Place a whole collection of letters on the table. Then give an instruction:
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find all the same letters
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sort the letters by color
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find all the letters in your name
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find all the vowels, for example
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make groups of letters that sound the same
Are the letters sorted? Then they can, of course, still be laced onto a string.
This creates a different activity with the same material every time.
8. Letter hunt in a sensory bin
Hide a number of letters in a bin with, for example, water beads, kinetic sand, or another suitable sensory material.
Call out a letter that needs to be found.
Found it? Name the letter and then lace it onto the string.
Here you add a tactile stimulus to letter recognition and fine motor skills. For some children, that extra sensory experience makes an activity more attractive and inviting.
If you hide the letters in clay, finger dexterity is exercised more than with soft material.
9. Think of a word yourself!
Let each child find the same letters first and then form a word. See how many words can be made with them.
Examples:
A – C – T – R – E.: cat, car, act, crate
B – A – L – S – T: ball, bass, last, salt, slab
A – A – E – L – R – S – T – N – K – I: later, learn, least, stair, train, slant, stare, stalk, tanks, slant
10. Who makes the longest word?
Give each child a string and let them make a long word.
It doesn’t always have to be about winning, of course. Searching for possibilities and thinking about letters is what makes this a fun challenge.
And another motor challenge…
Lacing actually involves both hands automatically. One hand holds the letter or string, while the other hand performs the movement.
Do you want to engage bilateral coordination even more? Let the child hold the letter with one hand and thread the string through the hole with the other. Afterward, you can swap roles.
You can also consciously have them use their non-dominant hand.
This way, a simple lacing activity suddenly becomes a great exercise for fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, dexterity, and motor planning.
Not everything has to be an assignment
And perhaps that is the best thing about this set: you don’t always have to attach a learning goal to it.
Let a child pick out letters, sort colors, make a long line, or just enjoy lacing. Often, the most fun play ideas arise precisely through self-discovery.
The Lowercase Lacing Alphabet combines language development and motor skills in a very natural way. Children are engaged with letters, while their hands are busy at work in the meantime.
A string, a handful of letters, and a bit of imagination… sometimes that’s all you need to learn through play.
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