Skill shelf · two hands, two different jobs · 3 activities
Hand Eye Coordination and Threading
Threading, where one hand holds the hole still, the other aims a lace at it, and the eye keeps both of them honest.
Threading is the first job that needs the two hands to do different things at the same moment. One holds the bead, or the card, or the loom, and does not move. The other feeds a lace into a hole it can see but cannot feel, lets go, and finds the tip again on the far side. Pinching does not ask for that, and neither does squeezing. This is the shelf where the hands stop being a pair and start being a team.
One thing decides whether a threading evening runs or stalls, and it is the end of the lace. A stiff tip does the threading by itself; a limp string end folds over at the hole and the bead goes nowhere. Three centimetres of sticky tape wound tightly round a piece of garden string fixes it in twenty seconds, and that is usually the difference between the tin coming out again tomorrow and it not.
The three are one movement at three sizes of patience. Four beads copied off a card at three years old, then a cereal box sewn full of real buttons at four, then a square of cloth on a cardboard loom at seven that takes five sittings and is meant to. If a child settles into the first, the other two are already waiting, which is unusual in a library this size.
The three
Ordered by the age they suit best. Each line gives the setup, how long it runs and whether anything has to be bought.
- 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. 2 min · 10 to 20 min · beads, a lace, a drawn card
- 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. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Cardboard Loom Yarn Weaving Your child weaves a small square of cloth on a loom cut from a cereal box, over four or five sittings, and it takes as long as it takes. 15 min, once · 20 min or more · household only
The loom and the sewing card are each made once, out of a cereal box, and then live in a tin for years.