Lacing Boards & Cards

Threading toys offer children from age 3 a calm, hands-on challenge: push the lace through a hole, pull it out the other side, watch a shape appear. All of them are wooden, and most are small enough to bring out on the kitchen table or take on a day out.

Lacing cards, boards and threading games

• Lacing cards: three safari animals to outline with a lace, and three animal weaving cards that use real wool, a softer thread for filling in a shape rather than following its edge.
• Lacing boards: the Montessori lacing board set leaves your child free to invent a path, while the shoe lacing and tying toy trains the exact gesture needed for real shoes.
• Threading games: the cheese and mouse toy and the wooden caterpillar turn each pass of the lace into a little story.
• A wider activity centre: the 4-in-1 motor skills centre, from age 2, combines lacing with other hand activities.

Which threading toy to start with

Begin with a single object and a single lace. The caterpillar or the cheese and mouse is ideal: the path is short and the result is visible at once. Once your child can go in and out of the holes without help, move on to the safari cards, where the lace has to follow an outline. The shoe tying board comes last, as bows ask for two hands working together.

Showing it once, then stepping back

Sit beside your child and thread two or three holes yourself, slowly and without talking, so the eyes can follow the hands. Then hand over the lace and leave mistakes alone: a lace that comes out on the wrong side is something your child will notice and fix. This quiet demonstration is how the Montessori method introduces a new activity, and it suits any of the Montessori games that ask for patience and precision.