Mary Had a Little Lamb Lacing Cards (Fine Motor Threading Activity)

Here’s another nursery rhyme printable for your little ones – a pack of 5 Mary Had a Little Lamb lacing cards.

Lacing cards like this are a super way to practice and develop fine motor skills like hand-eye coordination, finger strength and dexterity.

And the great thing is, this nursery rhyme fine motor activity need only a little prep and a few resources to use.

What Skills Can Your Little Ones Learn And Develop?

These Mary Had a Little Lamb threading cards are designed to help your children practice and develop some fine motor skills, such as:

• Hand-eye coordination – to be able to understand what they are seeing and get their hands to go where they want them to
• Finger strength – to be able to hold the lace and push it through the holes
• Hand dominance – developing and strengthening the skill of one of their hands
• Finger dexterity – the ability to move fingers in different ways and use different fingers for different tasks

They can also help children practice patience and concentration as they may find it tricky at first and offer a great chance to talk about the different holidays we celebrate.

How To Prepare These Nursery Rhyme Lacing Cards

First you’re going to want to download the threading cards by clicking on download button at the bottom of the page.

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Then print them off onto paper or card.

You’ll probably want to laminate them to make them stronger. 

Then use a hole punch to punch out the holes around the edges.

You can make the threading cards easier by punching fewer holes, or more difficult by adding a few more.

That’s pretty much it, just grab some long laces, or yarn and let your little learners practice their fine motor skills in a fun way.

If you are using yarn, you may want to toughen the ends by dipping in some PVA glue and leaving to dry first.

Get Even More Out of These Lacing Cards

These five cards are more versatile than they look – here are some ways to keep them busy long after that first threading session:

Tell the Story as You Lace

Before the lacing even starts, lay all five cards out on the table and invite your little ones to put them in order they appear in the rhyme – Mary, the lamb, the school, and so on. Can they retell the rhyme using just the pictures? This is a lovely sequencing activity that builds story comprehension and oral language skills. Once they’ve got the order sorted, they can work through the cards one by one, lacing each in turn before moving to the next.

Rhyme Detectives

Pull out the cards after the threading is done and play a simple describing game. You say a clue (“she has a pink bonnet and a shepherd’s crook…”) and your little one holds up the right card. Then swap – let them come up with the clue while you guess. This is a wonderful speaking and listening game that builds vocabulary and phonological awareness without anyone realizing it’s a literacy activity at all. You can make it trickier by asking “which card comes next in the story?” for a bit of sequencing practice.

Small World Play

Once the lacing is finished for the day, the laminated cards make brilliant small world props. Prop them up using a piece of playdough at the base and use them to create a little scene, and the imaginative play begins! This kind of open-ended storytelling builds language, creativity and narrative thinking. You could extend the scene further using your Baa Baa Black Sheep lacing cards for even more nursery rhyme characters to play with.

Phonics Hook

You could use the cards for a quick initial sounds activity. Mary, lamb, school, children (if you’re at digraphs)  – say each word slowly together and listen for the first sound. Can your little ones find something else in the room that starts with the same sound as “lamb”? Or how about a little alliteration game: what silly sentence can they make where every word starts with “M”? Magnificent Mary munched a mango muffin! The phonics printables over at Nurtured Neurons have plenty of beginning sounds activities to keep the momentum going.

World Nursery Rhyme Week

If you’re looking for a moment to bring these cards out with a bit of extra occasion behind them, World Nursery Rhyme Week (held each November, usually in the second or third week) is a perfect peg. It’s a global initiative celebrating the role nursery rhymes play in early language development – and a lovely excuse to make rhyme-themed activities the focus of the week. You can check the NN Special Day Calendar for the confirmed date each year and plan ahead.

However you use them, I hope they enjoy developing those fine motor skills!

Enjoy and let’s nurture those neurons!