Pattern Card Bead Lacing
Your child looks at a row of beads drawn on a card and threads the same order onto a lace, one bead at a time.
- Age
- 3 to 5, best at 3
- Setup
- 2 min
- Play
- 10 to 20 min
- Materials
- Beads, a lace, a drawn card
- Mess
- None
- You
- Set it up, then leave
Activity KG-A012
What you need
Big beads, a lace with a firm end, and a card you draw in a minute. The two things that decide how this goes are the size of the hole and the stiffness of the lace.
- Wooden beads, 15 to 20 mmx30 to 40, in 3 or 4 colours Or: penne pasta, five minutes with felt tips and ten minutes to dry. Or drinking straws cut into 2 cm pieces. A 15 mm bead with a 5 mm hole is the size a three year old can hold in one hand and aim at with the other. Smaller beads turn the whole thing into hand work, and the pattern, which is the point, gets lost underneath it.
- A shoelace, about 40 cmx1 Or: a bootlace. Or garden string with 3 cm of sticky tape wound tightly round the end. The stiff tip is what does the threading. A limp string end folds at the hole and the bead never goes on. Forty centimetres holds about fifteen beads and still leaves an end to hold on to.
- One bead tied on as a stopperx1 Or: a knot big enough not to pass through the hole. Tie it 5 cm from one end. Without a stopper the whole row slides off the moment the lace is lifted, and a pattern that vanishes ends a sitting faster than anything else.
- Cards, about 8 by 12 cmx6 Or: the back of a cereal box cut into rectangles. Or index cards. Draw the beads at their real size, in a row. A life-size card can be laid flat and the real bead put straight down on top of its drawing, which is how a three year old checks a match.
- Felt tips in the bead coloursx3 or 4 The match has to be obvious across the table. A card drawn in biro with the colour names written on it is asking a three year old to read, which is a different activity altogether.
How to set it up
- Tip the beads out and put each colour in its own small dish or jar lid.1 min
- Draw four beads in a row on a card, life size, in two colours that alternate.1 min
- Tie one bead onto the lace 5 cm from the end so nothing can slide off.30 sec
- Thread the first two beads yourself, touching each one down onto its drawing, then pass the lace over.30 sec
What to say and what to do
Say
This one first. Then this one.
Put the bead on the picture and see if it is the same.
- Then wait. A lot of three year olds spot their own wrong colour at the next bead, and finding it themselves is worth more than being told.
Do
- Draw the card in front of her rather than producing it finished. Watching the row get made is half the explanation.
- Sit alongside for the first card of a sitting, then move a metre away. Being in the room is enough; being at his elbow turns it into a test.
- Make a harder card only when she asks what the next one is. Six cards in a stack, and she picks, works better than a card chosen for her.
Let be
- A run of beads that ignores the card completely. Free threading is how the hand gets fast enough to have attention left over for the order.
- Beads pulled straight back off again. Taking them off is the same movement, and it is usually where counting starts.
- A card abandoned at three beads out of six. Three beads in the right order is three right decisions.
What it looks like when it is working
- The lace goes into the hole in one movement instead of being walked around the rim of the bead.
- She glances back at the card between beads without being asked to.
- He starts saying the pattern out loud before his hand picks the bead up.
- The finished lace gets held up next to the card to compare, and then undone to do again.
What to expect at each age
At three
Threads steadily with the card in view, and holds a two-colour, one-then-the-other pattern for four or five beads before the order drifts. Often needs the card touched with a finger to come back to it.
Holding a three-colour pattern, and carrying it on past the end of the drawn row, arrives nearer four. At three the win is the first four beads in the right order.
Lasts 10 to 15 minutes
At four
Copies a six or eight bead card in two or three colours and checks his own work at the end. Starts drawing cards for you to copy, which are usually harder than the ones he does.
Building the pattern from memory, with the card turned face down, is what comes next, and it turns up on its own once copying is easy.
Lasts 15 to 25 minutes
At five
Reads the card once, turns it over and threads the whole row from memory. Adds size and shape to colour, and spots a deliberate mistake drawn into the card.
From here the beads move on to counting and grouping. A lace of twenty threaded in threes is the same activity doing arithmetic.
Lasts 20 minutes or more
When it goes sideways
Four things that come up, what each one says about the level, and the move that answers it.
He threads every bead and ignores the card
The threading itself is still taking all the attention, so there is nothing spare for the order.
Let the free threading run for a few sittings, and shorten the card to two beads. Two is short enough to hold in mind while the hands are busy.
The bead will not go on the lace
The lace end is folding at the hole. That is a lace problem rather than a hand problem, and it is the commonest reason this one stalls.
Wind sticky tape tightly round 3 cm of the end, or dip it in glue and let it dry hard. A shoelace with its plastic tip intact is the easiest thing in the house.
She gets three beads in and then loses the order
The pattern is one colour longer than she can hold at the moment.
Drop back to two colours, alternating. Once that runs to eight beads without a look at the card, put the third colour back.
It is over in four minutes
Four beads is a short job, and it has been finished.
Put six cards in a stack and let her choose the next one. Choosing the card is what turns one row into a sitting.
Making it harder
Four rungs on the same beads and the same lace. The card is the only thing that changes.
Free threading, no card
- Ready when
- This is where everybody starts.
- What changes
- A bowl of beads, a lace with a stopper tied on, and no order to keep to.
- What is new
- Getting the lace through the hole at all, which is the whole job until it is easy.
Two colours, alternating
- Ready when
- She can thread ten beads without the lace end folding.
- What changes
- A card with four beads drawn on it, life size, in two colours.
- What is new
- Looking away from the hands to something else, and then finding the place again.
Three colours and a longer row
- Ready when
- He copies a four bead card without checking each one against the drawing.
- What changes
- Eight beads on the card, three colours, and a run of four that repeats twice.
- What is new
- Noticing that the row repeats, which is the first bit of real pattern reading.
The card face down
- Ready when
- She copies an eight bead card and finds her own mistakes in it.
- What changes
- Look at the card, turn it over, then thread the row.
- What is new
- The pattern is held in memory rather than read off the table, which is a different job out of the same box.
Stop with the lace finished rather than emptied. A threaded row hung over a door handle beside its card is the reason the box comes out again tomorrow.
How to keep it safe
Beads and a lace, so there are two things worth doing.
- Beads of 15 mm and up, and count them back into the tin at the end. A bead on the floor is the one a crawling baby finds.
- Keep the lace to about 40 cm. Long enough for fifteen beads, short enough not to go round a neck.
- Sit at the table for this one while a child is still putting things in his mouth, and save the small beads for four and up.
- Put the tin on a shelf between sittings rather than in the floor toy box, if there is a baby in the house.
Why this helps
From the guide The claims here follow our guide on hands, pencils and the grip question.
Threading is two hands doing different jobs an arm's length apart: one holds a bead still while the other aims a lace end at a five millimetre hole. It is finer work than it looks, and it is one of the few things a three year old will repeat forty times without being asked, which is what makes it worth the table space.
The card is what turns it from hand work into thinking. Once the order matters, she has to look away from her hands, hold two or three things in mind, put a bead on and then find her place again. That loop, look away, act, come back, is the beginning of working from a plan, and it is the same loop behind copying a word off a board years later.
Skill practised: threading accuracy with a sequence held in mind
It is a pattern game with a row that grows, not early maths teaching. A three year old threads beads because the lace fills up.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. The taped lace end and the trick of laying the card flat under the beads both take four seconds to show and a paragraph to describe.
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Questions parents ask
What can I use instead of wooden beads?
Penne or rigatoni, coloured with felt tips and left ten minutes to dry, threads exactly the same way and costs nothing. Drinking straws cut into 2 cm lengths are the other good one, and they are light, so a full lace stays easy to lift. Both have holes wide enough for a shoelace, which is the only measurement that matters here.
He just threads and does not follow the card at all.
Free threading comes first for nearly everybody. The order starts to matter once the hands have stopped needing all the attention, and that is usually a few weeks rather than a few days. A two bead card, drawn life size, is normally enough to bring the pattern in. Give it a handful of sittings before making the card any longer.
How many beads should be out?
Thirty to forty, in three or four colours, in separate dishes. The separate dishes matter more than the number. A heap of mixed beads turns every choice into a search, and the searching is what ends a sitting early at this age.
Is this the same as a lacing card?
Not quite. A lacing board has fixed holes and a route to follow, so the question is which hole next. This has a free lace and a sequence to build, so the question is which bead next. They sit well together, and most children take to the beads earlier because a bead going on gives a result you can see from across the room.