Our A-Z of Fine Motor Play series continues with the letter H. For this letter, I immediately thought of hearts and wanted to devise an activity around some heart buttons I had recently purchased.
Lately, my son has started to attempt to button up his own coat. I, therefore, decided to create a Heart Button Snake to develop his fine motor skills.
Making the Heart Button Snake was straightforward despite the fact I have never sewn on a button before.
I took a strip of pink ribbon and sewed a purple button onto one end and did the same with a larger red button at the other. The red button is used as a stopper.
Next I found four pieces of coloured felt and used four different sized heart cookie cutters as a template to draw around.
Once the sixteen hearts had been cut out I slit a hole in the middle of each heart that was just big enough for the purple heart button to fit through.
I demonstrated a few times how my son could hold the purple heart button with one hand and hold the felt heart in the other.
We gently pushed the purple heart button through the slit and threaded the felt heart along the length of the ribbon.
It isn’t until you try and teach a child how to button something up that you realise what a complex skill it is.
Not only do they have to push the button through the slit but they have to pull it out through the slit too.
It took several attempts before my son became confident to thread the button through the slit without any help.
By the time he had threaded all sixteen hearts on to the ribbon he was able to do the activity independently.
He enjoyed unthreading the felt hearts just as much so he could repeat the activity time and time again.
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