Fine Motor Clothesline - Make Learning Fun!

This activity is perfect for developing a number of early learning skills including number recognition, 1:1 correspondence, subitising and of course fine motor skills. These fine motor clotheslines are super easy to put together and are lots of fun to play with.

You will need:

• Cardboard
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Black marker pen
• Brown marker pen
• Bamboo skewer
• Yarn
• Child's plastic needle
• Coloured felt
• Plastic Beads
• School glue
• Small wooden pegs

Make your Fine Motor Clothesline

1. Using your black marker, draw a shirt shape onto the felt and cut out with scissors. You can use any colour felt that you like to make your shirts!

2. Glue down beads onto each shirt. Allow the glue to dry. If you do not have beads, glue down some buttons - they will look great too.

3. Cut a piece of cardboard into a rectangle. We have used the side of a delivery box. You can use any card that you have on hand. Empty cereal, museli bar and pasta boxes work well too!

4. Rule two rectangles on each end of the cardboard and colour in with the brown marker. These rectangles will be the poles that hold up your clothesline.

5. Take your skewer and very carefully press it through the top of the brown rectangles to make a hole through the card. You might like to ask an adult to help with this step, as skewers can be sharp and you do not want to hurt yourself!

6. Thread your yarn through the plastic needle and press it through the holes to make your clothesline.

7. Trace shirt shapes along the card and label with numbers that correspond to the number of beads that you have stuck onto the felt shirts.

8. Attach a pair of pegs onto the line above each shirt.

What does this project mean to you and your kids?

I love making simple toys for our playroom that our kids can come back and play with time and time again. This activity is great as it allows children to act out and imitate everyday activities, it is made from easily accessible materials and it is really quick to put together. Making the clothesline board is as simple as cutting out some felt shirt shapes, and drawing a clothes line on a piece of recycled card. We then decorated the shirts with some bead buttons and added a yarn line to our play board.

This activity is perfect for developing a number of early learning skills including number recognition, 1:1 correspondence, subitising and of course fine motor skills. It's also great for developing language and colour identification. But most of all, it's actually fun! Your kids will love playing with this clothesline busy board over and over again!