Shoe Box Loom and Paper Snake Weaving

Weaving is a great way to work on fine motor skills and as one of the targets for this school year for both J and T I wanted to set up an activity that could be done time and time again as well as produce some art work for the walls when we wanted so I got creative and made a table top/portable loom for the kids to use and then we got weaving for the first time.

Shoe Box Lid Loom

Shoe Box Lid
Masking Tape or Duct Tape
Yarn
Scissors

How to make a shoe box lid loom

Take a shoe box lid and first off reinforce the sides by wrapping them with masking tape or duct tape. Then along the longest edge cut slits at regular intervals on one side and repeat on the other side with exactly the same number of slits.

With the first slit put in the yarn and wrap around the neighbouring slit to form a anchoring point and then pass the yarn down to the bottom slit and across to the next slit along and then up again repeat this along all of the points and attach with an anchor at the other end.

Paper Snake Weaving

We’ve never done weaving at home so I wanted a method to work on with the kids that would be fun and get them using their fine motor skills without it being a chore. So Paper Snakes seemed ideas.

Materials

Paper of different colours (Light weight is easier to weave with)
Scissors
Black Marker

Weaving with Paper Snakes

Cut strips of paper that are different thickness and different colours – I cut along the landscape edge of the paper as this would be an ideal length for going into the shoe box for weaving.

On the end of each strip of paper cut to a point and draw on a face (to make the snakes).

Then with your child guide them to take the snake under ground (underneath the yarn) and then back up and go over the ground.

There will be mistakes and we left some and some we went back and corrected.

Using paper we’ve been able to take off the weaving from the loom and then stick it to paper to produce art work for the wall.

With a couple of pictures made the loom and the paper snakes are set up as an invitation to weave every so often to help develop fine motor skills needed for writing in the future and pencil control.

The shoe box lid set up with the yarn makes an easy storage container for the snakes and can then easily be brought out and set up time and time again. I tend to set up a snake to start off with which makes it easier for my kids to know what the pattern will be.

If you would like more ideas for fine motor skills that you can do at home with the kids to help support their development then check out our pinterest board for more ideas.

Follow Rainy Day Mum’s board Fine motor skills on Pinterest.