Make a Sewing Craft For Young Children
A Simple Preschool Craft to Build Fine Motor Skills
Dec 15, 2008
Young children are still developing their fine motor control, muscle tone, and balance. Between ages three and five, children are learning to use their eyes to follow hand movements and working on placement and spatial awareness of small objects.
Activities that can help preschool-aged children increase their fine motor skills include drawing and painting, threading beads, rolling playdough, playing with finger puppets, using the fingers to pick up small objects, and sewing and lacing.
Instead of purchasing a sewing or lacing shape for your preschool-aged children, create a free-form sewing circle. Even if you find it difficult to make crafts, this is one that anyone can do. This craft is suitable for children who are able to sit while crafting, since it is not advisable to run with a needle and thread! An adult should work with a child to create the sewing hoop, then the child can sew.
You will need:
A plastic needle, available at craft stores
Small amounts of yarn in different colours
Thin burlap or other cloth with small holes in it
An embroidery hoop
Many of these can be found at craft or thrift stores. You can easily use a thin, old sweater as the fabric, for example. Small amounts of yarn are also easy to find at yard sales and thrift stores.
Make the Sewing Hoop
- Lay out the cloth. Using a permanent marker, trace around the outside of the embroidery hoop to make a circle on the cloth. Cut out the circle.
- Loosen the embroidery hoop so that the two parts of the hoop come apart. Place the circle of cloth over the interior circle of the embroidery hoop. Place the exterior circle onto the hoop. Pull on the loose edges of the cloth as you tighten the embroidery hoop. Your goal is to pull the cloth fairly tight so that it is easy to sew through. The centre should move a little when you push on it, but not much.
- If you want to, you can now cut off any extra cloth that extends beyond the outside of the embroidery hoop.
Adding the Needle and Thread
- Thread some of the yarn through the needle. The needle should be a larger plastic needle, available at craft stores. It is still pointy, but not pointy enough to hurt small hands.
- A child can then do free-form sewing back and forth through the cloth on the hoop. Add different colours of yarn and different needles to create a vibrant, 3-D sewing picture. After the child is finished sewing, cut the wool out and begin again, or remove the cloth circle and add a new one if the child would like to keep his creation.
Happy sewing!
Source:
- Shirley's Preschool, Fine Motor Skills
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