Stringing activities are another of those basic developmental activities that you often see in preschool and daycare environments. Stringing is often involved in many crafts but did you know that stringing is also a great way to develop your child’s foundational skills for higher-level fine motor and visual motor abilities. It develops grasping and manipulation skills, eye-hand coordination, bilateral skills, and attention to task, to name a few.
You can also use stringing activities to build even more developmental skills with these games and activities:
- String a sequence of beads and take a picture. Start with approximately 4-5 beads and then gradually increase the number in your pictures. Give your child the picture and see if they can copy it. This is great for working on visual scanning and visual discrimination as they search for and match the pieces. It is also great for design copying, which is a pre-writing skill.
- Have your child string all the pieces of a certain color, such as blue or yellow. If you have beads of multiple colors and designs, challenge your child to find the pieces with more specific features, such as beads that have both blue and yellow or beads that have circles or triangle shapes. This is great for teaching sorting and discrimination skills, as well as other visual perceptual skills.
- Give your child directions to follow and sequence, such as put on a green bead, two blue beads, then a yellow bead. This is great for developing auditory processing skills and the ability to follow multi-step directions, which are great school-readiness skills!
- Have your child string their favorite colors or favorite designs in order from most to least or least to most, which is great for learning how to place things in ascending or descending order.
With so many different skills to build, what’s not to love?
