Button Sewing Card
Your child sews real buttons onto a punched card with a shoelace, up through one hole and down through the other, until the card is covered in buttons.
- Age
- 4 to 6, best at 4
- Setup
- 15 min, once
- Play
- 10 to 20 min
- Materials
- Household only
- Mess
- None
- You
- Stay nearby
Activity KG-A024
What you need
The card is made once and then lives in a tin. Two choices decide how this goes: how big the buttons are, and how stiff the end of the lace is.
- Stiff card, about 10 by 15 cmx2 or 3 Or: a cereal box side, doubled and glued. Or the back of a used notepad. Or an ice cream tub lid. Single cereal box card tears through at the holes after about twenty passes. Two layers glued together, or one layer of shoebox card, lasts a whole autumn of car journeys and waiting rooms.
- Big buttons, 3 to 4 cm acrossx6 to 10 Or: bottle caps with two holes made with a skewer. Or 3 cm discs cut from card and punched twice. The holes on a big button sit about a centimetre apart and are wide enough to take a shoelace tip. A shirt button has pinhead holes, and at four that is not a challenge, it is a wall.
- A shoelace with a firm plastic endx1 or 2 Or: 60 cm of thick yarn with 2 cm of sticky tape wound tightly round the end into a point. Or a blunt plastic darning needle. The stiff end is the needle. A soft yarn end folds the moment it meets a hole and has to be re-pointed every few passes, which is where a four year old puts the card down.
- A bamboo skewer or a thick darning needlex1 For making the holes, which is the adult's minute of work. It puts a hole the size of a lace tip anywhere on the card; a hole punch only reaches about a centimetre in from the edge and cannot make a matched pair in the middle.
- A cork mat, a folded towel or an old magazinex1 Something to push the skewer into. It keeps the point off the table and makes the holes round rather than torn, and a torn hole is where the card gives way first.
How to set it up
- Hold each button flat on the card and mark through its two holes with a pencil, six to ten buttons spread across the card.5 min
- Push the skewer through every mark into the folded towel, and widen each hole with a small twist.5 min
- Wind 2 cm of sticky tape tightly round the end of the yarn into a point, or use the plastic tip of a spare shoelace.2 min
- Sew one button on slowly, up through one hole and down through the other, twice round, and leave the lace hanging.2 min
- Keep the card, the laces and the spare buttons in one tin so the whole thing can go in a bag.1 min
What to say and what to do
Say
Up through this one, down through that one.
Pull it all the way through before you go again.
- Then say nothing for a while. The second button is much slower than the first, and it is where the technique arrives.
Do
- Sew the first button alongside him rather than describing it. Up, down, up, down is a rhythm, and rhythms do not transfer in words.
- Let the lace stay long. Cutting it to a neat length means rethreading every two buttons, and rethreading is what ends sittings.
- Put the tin in the bag for the bus, the waiting room and the long lunch. This is the one in the library that travels best.
Let be
- Buttons sewn on loosely, so they flap. A button that has gone round twice is sewn on, whatever it looks like.
- The lace going through the same hole three times. Extra passes make a thicker knot and no harm at all.
- A card with four buttons on it and two bare pairs of holes left over. Four buttons is a finished card if that is where he stopped.
What it looks like when it is working
- The lace goes into the hole first try instead of being aimed at three times.
- The hand underneath the card starts waiting for the lace rather than being told where it is.
- He turns the card over himself to find the tip, instead of lifting it to look under.
- She asks for a second card so she can do the buttons in a colour order.
What to expect at each age
At four
Pushes the lace down through a hole and then hunts for the tip underneath with a whole flat hand. Sews two or three buttons a sitting, loosely, and wants the lace re-pointed when it frays.
Feeling for the tip without looking arrives later. At four this is done by eye, and it is often the first job where the two hands do genuinely different things at once.
Lasts 8 to 12 minutes
At five
Goes up and down without turning the card over, keeps the lace from pulling all the way out, and finishes a card of six buttons in one sitting.
A blunt needle and real thread on cloth is the next thing, and most children ask for it somewhere around here.
Lasts 15 to 20 minutes
At six
Sews a button onto actual fabric with a blunt needle, ties it off, and puts one back on a shirt that lost it.
This is the point where the card has done its job and the mending basket is more interesting than it is.
Lasts 20 minutes or more
When it goes sideways
Each of these is the card telling you which part of the job is carrying too much weight.
The end of the lace keeps folding over
The tape has worked loose, or the yarn is a little too thick for the hole.
Re-wind the tape tightly and cut the tip off at an angle, or open each hole slightly with a twist of the skewer. A stiff tip that goes in first try is what this whole activity runs on.
The card has torn between two holes
Single-layer card, and about twenty passes through one hole is its limit.
Put a strip of sticky tape over the back of the torn part to keep tonight going, and glue two layers together for the next card. A doubled card lasts many times longer.
She pulls the lace all the way out every time
The far end is not anchored, so every strong pull undoes the last two passes.
Tie a fat knot in the far end, or tape 5 cm of it to the back of the card at the start. Then pulling hard costs nothing and she can pull as hard as she likes.
He does one button and stops
One button is about eight separate hand movements, and at four that is a unit of work rather than a warm-up.
Take one button as a finished sitting and leave the card out where he put it. Most four year olds come back to it twice more before bedtime, which is three buttons without a single reminder.
Making it harder
Four rungs, from a card with a row of plain holes to a button back on a shirt. Only the last one leaves the card behind.
Lacing through plain holes
- Ready when
- This is the starting point.
- What changes
- A card with a row of holes and no buttons, laced in and out.
- What is new
- Getting the tip into a hole and pulling the whole length of lace through.
One button, two holes
- Ready when
- He can lace a row without the lace pulling out.
- What changes
- Big buttons, and pairs of holes punched to match their spacing.
- What is new
- Two holes that both have to be hit, in order, with a button held still on top.
A card of six, in a pattern
- Ready when
- She sews a button on without anyone holding it for her.
- What changes
- Six or eight buttons and a colour order decided before she starts.
- What is new
- A plan that has to survive twenty minutes of fiddly work.
A button onto cloth
- Ready when
- He finishes a card and asks what else this works on.
- What changes
- A scrap of felt or an old shirt, a blunt darning needle, thick thread and a real button.
- What is new
- No punched holes. The needle makes its own way through, and the button has to end up where it was wanted.
Stop with the lace still threaded rather than pulled out and coiled. A card with a lace hanging from it is a job half done, which is the single best reason for it to be picked up again tomorrow.
How to keep it safe
One blunt tool for the child, one sharp one that stays with you.
- You make the holes. The skewer is sharp for the minute it is in use and then it goes back in the drawer.
- A blunt plastic needle or a taped lace for the sewing. Both go through a punched hole perfectly well.
- Count the buttons out and back into the tin. They are a mouthing size, and a complete set is also a clear floor.
- Use laces about 60 cm long, which is enough for several buttons and short enough to stay away from a neck.
- Sit at the table with a four year old who still puts things in her mouth, and keep the tin on a shelf between sittings.
Why this helps
From the guide The claims here follow our guide on hands, pencils and the grip question.
Sewing a button is the clearest two-handed job a four year old can be handed. One hand holds the button flat against the card, the other pushes the lace down through a hole it cannot see from below, finds the tip underneath and pulls it through. The hands are doing different things at the same moment, and neither one can stop and wait while the other works. That division of labour is the thing being built here, and it is much harder than it looks from outside.
The other half is that it ends in a real object doing a real job. A button sewn onto a card is the same action, in the same order, as the one an adult does to a shirt cuff. Children know the difference between a task invented to teach them something and a task that is actually the task, and that is most of why this one gets picked up again in the back of the car.
Skill practised: two hands on separate jobs, one of them out of sight
This is not handwriting practice with a lace in it. A four year old sews buttons because a card covered in buttons is a good thing to have made.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. How the free hand learns to wait underneath the card is much easier to see in ten seconds of video than to read.
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Questions parents ask
What size buttons work best?
Three to four centimetres across, with two holes about a centimetre apart and wide enough for a shoelace tip. Coat buttons and the big ones on the bottom of the button jar are ideal. Shirt buttons come later, with a real needle and thread, and trying them at four usually ends the sitting rather than raising it.
My four year old cannot find the hole underneath.
That is the hardest part of the job and it is normally the last bit to arrive. Hold the card upright against a book instead of flat on the table, so she can see both sides, and give her a card with fewer, bigger holes. Working flat, by feel, comes a few weeks later on its own.
Can we use a real needle?
A blunt darning needle with a big eye is fine at four and is what the cloth version needs later. Keep sharp needles for six and up, and keep the skewer that makes the holes as an adult tool at every age. The lace with a taped point does everything a needle does on a punched card.
How long does a card last?
A doubled card with ten hole pairs takes a couple of hundred passes before the holes start to give, which is several weeks of pockets and bags. When one tears, tape the back and make the next one from a cereal box, which takes about fifteen minutes and is a good job to do alongside a child who now knows what it is for.