Yarn y
Y is always tricky but this craft does double duty not only reinforcing the letter y, but also as a active fine motor skills lacing toy! As you can see I wasn’t fussy about how my son laced it. I wanted him to get the yarn through the holes not make perfect stitches. Holding the yarn in between his thumb and fingers also promotes the tripod grip ( proper way to hold writing tools).
- Gather your materials. You will need some cardboard, a hole punch, some markers, yarn, scissors and tape.
- Write a lowercase ( would work great with uppercase too ) on your cardboard.
- Hand it to your child and invite them to color it with markers. My son has taken to tracing and writing the letter on it.
- Add more colors until they decide they are done.
- While they are coloring cut off a long piece of yarn and double it, so it make a bog loop. Tape the 2 ends together tightly so that it makes a hard end for easy lacing.
- Cut the y out.
- Hole punch time! Our card board was too thick for my son to punch the holes, if the cereal box in the picture hasn’t had writing on the inside ( why do they do that?!) it would have been great. If your child can help , have them help.
- Before you hand the y back thread the yarn through the first hole and loop it back through the yarn so it ties onto the y. This eliminates meltdowns about the yarn just zooming through all the holes. As well as keeps the 2 pieces together for later use!
- Lace! I laced the first two holes to demonstrate it to my son then let him at it.
- Keep going!
Teaching children about letters is more fun if you include as many novel and sensory experiences as you can. This was a huge hit and even bigger mess, but well worth it. My son who is in the midst of a perfectionist phase loved that he could “erase” his letters. He also loved how the bright colors magically appeared under the cornstarch.
- Gather your materials. You will need a shallow cardboard box, cornstarch, and some brightly colored markers, pastels or what I used… window markers.
- Color the bottom of your box with a few colors. If you are using anything “wet” let it dry 100% before adding the cornstarch.
- Add the cornstarch and cover the color.
- Start writing! Isn’t it cool how the colors pop? I was giddy that it worked!
- Explore!
- He wrote an M then exclaimed – look I can make a W too, then flipped the whole box , then wrote another M.
We stepped outside to shake all the extra off! 
Have fun this one is MESSY – I was covered, my camera was covered, my son was covered and we had a blast!
Some of our Favorite Alphabet Books
Good Morning! All of your letter activities are so much better than all of the worksheets that they are handing out in many schools today. During my first year of teaching, I had some little ones struggling w/ letter identification. Sensory activities seems to be the best way to go- fun and combines “doing” w/ visual and auditory learning. I often used clay and chalk outside with the kids for activities.
Even though my girls are getting older, I still love visiting your site. Can’t wait to do all of these fun things w/ my little man.
Jen from Creative and Curious Kids!
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Wow – I must be getting good, this is our plan for next week when we go over “y”. I have to say I’m proud of myself 🙂 LOVE the cornstarch writing too!
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Lacing cards are great my son had issues with his grip because of his ASD and we did lacing cards every day this kind of project also works great with the fun foam as well
Yes foam is great- cuts down on the potential for paper cuts too!
we are doing y this week and i was wondering what we would do. love it! and what a neat way to do letters wtih the markers underneath. i think my boys will love both of these. and we are all about MESSY crafts. ;0
Love it! I think this will be my daughter’s favorite project.
How lucky I was to come across your site today. My 4-year-old son is suddenly interested in letters but lacks the fine-motor skills for writing. These projects sound perfect for him, particularly the decorate-and-sew idea.
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We love using cornstarch! I have also used wheat berries and rice as they are a bit less messy (but not half as fun)
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we did this at preschool using salt – still a bit messy but won’t ‘fly’ everywhere like cornstarch. The kids LOVED it! i love the idea of coloring underneath!