Have you ever done weaving with your preschooler? This is a crafty activity that ticks all the boxes for your youngster: it’s fun, colourful and creative, and it’s also a brilliant way to help them develop the fine motor skills they need.
What is weaving?
Put simply, weaving joins together two sets of threads, one that goes across and the other going down. When the two threads are interlaced like this, at right angles to each other, they can make cloth.
Weaving might seem like a complicated activity for preschoolers, but in fact it’s quite simple for young children to do. They can learn to pull one thread, or strip of paper, or twig, over and under the other.
Benefits of weaving for preschoolers
Weaving is good for preschoolers because it lets them practise doing fiddly things with their fingers. Known as fine motor skills, these tricky movements don’t come immediately to babies and toddlers, so throughout the early years, they need lots of activities to help them practise.
There are lots of other skills that can be developed with weaving activities, including:
- Hand-eye co-ordination
- Focus and concentration
- Practical understanding of words and ideas like over, under, in, out, up and down
- Experience of patterns – great for their early mathematical understanding
- Mindfulness
And the benefits of weaving don’t end there. It’s also lots of fun, and very satisfying to create something that can be kept and used when it’s finished.
A weaving activity for children
Fancy trying weaving with your child at home? Try this weaving activity for children using natural materials from the park or garden.
What you need:
- A collection of natural materials collected on a walk to the park, or from the garden. You’re looking for long, thin items that can easily be woven into your creation, so bendy twigs, long-stemmed flowers and grasses are all ideal.
- Yarn
- Sticks to make a weaving frame. You could use garden canes cut to size, or suitably sized twigs. Around 30cm is a good length.
- Scissors to cut your materials with
Instructions:
- Arrange your sticks in a square shape and tie them at the corners using your yarn. (This requires an adult!)
- Starting in one corner, stretch the yarn from one side of the square frame to the other, and then back. Keep going backwards and forwards with your yarn until you have horizontal lines covering the whole frame. This is the framework for your ‘loom’.
- Tie the end of the yarn to the frame and trim if necessary.
- With your child, weave your bendy twigs, stems and grasses in and out of the yarn to create a unique woven pattern. Let them do what they can without help.
- Trim the ends of your natural materials at the edges.
- You now have a beautiful woven masterpiece to display!
- When your grasses and stems start to wilt, or if you just fancy a change, you can remove them and do the activity again with a fresh collection of materials.
Contact us
At our nursery in Paddington, we love to think up new and creative ways to help children develop. If you’d like to find out more, contact us.