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Article 6 Ideas To Help Strengthen Scissor Skills In Preschoolers

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Do you have a little one who is learning how to manipulate scissors? There are many benefits to learning how to use scissors for little ones, and they can start honing these skills from as little as 2 years old, though you’ll especially want to work on these skills with your preschoolers before they start big school.

Help tune up those fine motor skills with these 6 scissor skills projects:

1. Make a rainbow

Help your little one draw a rainbow, outline it in black texta and ask them to follow the lines to cut it out. As a bonus, ask them to glue it to a piece of paper to recreate the rainbow, it will help them to understand how to place things back together, almost like a puzzle!

2. Go on a newspaper/magazine hunt

This is a great activity for a rainy afternoon. Ask your child to find certain pictures in the newspaper or magazine (for the slightly older ones, ask them to find words they’ll know – or ask them to cut up letters to spell their name).

3. Cut out a sun

This is a nice fiddly one which will allow your child to really manipulate the scissors. Draw a nice big sun with thick rays to get the most out of this activity.

4. Use different materials

Finding different materials to cut out will help strengthen your child’s hands and allow them to understand how they need to manipulate different textured objects. Try material, tissue paper, cardboard and even pipe cleaners.

5. Create a night sky

Ask your child to draw lots of stars of all sizes – make sure they include a few shooting stars to make it magical. Add a moon in and ask your child to colour it in and then cut everything out. Once they’ve finished, you can get a dark piece of paper and ask your child to glue it on – makes for a nice picture.

6. Make a family tree

Layer upon layer for this one. You’ll need a big piece of cardboard for this one, some paper and photos of everyone you’d like to include. Ask them to colour in the cardboard as a background, draw a tree and colour on your paper, cut it out and stick it to the cardboard. From there, ask your child to cut out the photographs and stick them on. If you want to make this one a really big activity, you can cut out letters from magazines or newspapers to make family names.

Bonus idea:

7. Cut up playdoh

For the toddlers who are just starting their scissor journey, the best way to practice is to allow them to cut up playdoh – it’s a fun activity and you can use plastic scissors to ensure little fingers don’t get hurt.

 

Do you have any scissor activities to add to this list? SHARE with us in the comments below.

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Comments

  • My youngest daughter used to cut so many pic’s from mags and paste them on boxes all the time. I didn’t encourage this she just loved doing it, It made her precision cutting skills very excel.

    Reply

  • We used to chop up magazine pictures to create our own pictures. We made some crazy to look at pictures

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  • Make sure you keep out of reach paper you don’t want cut up, including very thick paper certificates are printed on. I know a 4 y.o. who used Crayola plastic scissors to do exactly that. The parents tried to do it using the same scissors and barely succeeded. No other scissors with child’s reach at all. (only in a securely locked office) yes it was checked and it was locked.

    Reply

  • really great ideas and tips. i’ll definitely refer back to this

    Reply

  • Going to give these ideas a go.

    Reply

  • I feel nervous giving my toddler scissors I think I will teach him when he’s a bit older

    Reply

  • I have this issue, great ideas

    Reply

  • There are plenty of activity sheets available for fine motor skills activities which includes using scissors.

    Reply

  • I’m going to invest in some plastic sis to get started.

    Reply

  • My grand daughter knows how to cut hair but trying to get her to cut other things and she will not. will get her mother to look at this and will try some with her. My 6 year olds have been using scissors for a while now and their skills are getting really good. We do zig zag lines and I get them to scribble and try to cut on the lines.

    Reply

  • Great ideas hopefully will get my kid cutting

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  • But its so nerve wracking when little fingers use scissors.

    Reply

  • Another one I might book mark this so I can read it when it gets to my turn

    Reply

  • Great tips, however still too difficult for my 5yr old. She has Down Syndrome and her fine motor skills aren’t as developed. You have these special circle scissors which make it a bit easier.

    Reply

  • Wat a great selection of ideas.

    Reply

  • I have recently just bought my son some plastic scissors as he was interested in some that were at playgroup. I haven’t used them with him yet, but these are some great things that as he gets older he can practice with. For now we will stick to playdoh!

    Reply

  • any sort of cutting around lines is a bonus. Having to hold and move the scissors around shapes is important.

    • Doing these activities together is terrific – role modelling is so essential.

    Reply
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