Preschool Scissor Practice
Scissor use is one of the tool use skills that children start learning after the age of 2. As a teacher or parent, you can encourage your child to learn scissor skills with these activity ideas given below. The preschool scissor practice activities help children to learn skills in scissor use in a systematic manner. Once your child has picked up one skill, move on to the next. Provide opportunities for art and craft activities as well as daily life activities for the child to practice their skill.
Snipping:
Snipping or making snips on paper, is one of the first skills children learn in scissor use. At this stage children are usually very motivated to learn to use scissors. When they watch adults use scissors, they may show interest in doing it themselves. Make sure that you provide your child with a small, easy to use, children’s scissor that fits their hand size well. To start with you can give the child a paper bag and ask the child to make random snips. Then you can place a small tea light inside the paper bag and show the light streaming through the snips. You can also give the child narrow strips of paper that the child can cut and then stick to make paper mosaic pictures, or decorate other crafts. Silver, gold and glitter paper are particularly very interesting for children.
Cutting on a Straight Line:
To teach this skill, draw a straight line on a piece of paper and ask the child to cut on it. Make long paper strips, tape them together at the end of a stick and make a wand that the child can enjoy playing. You can also staple colored paper strips on ribbon to make decorations that you can hang in your classroom or home.
Cutting on a Curved Line:
Draw curved lines like semi circles, and waves. Get the child to cut along the lines. Glue the curved lines of different colors to make interesting abstract art. Make waves in different shaded of blue, and glue them on a light blue paper. Add a boat shape and you will have an interesting picture of the sea.
Cutting Triangles and Squares:
Once the child is comfortable with curved lines, you can introduce triangles and squares. Triangles are easier to cut as they have only 3 sides. Get the child to cut triangles and glue them together to make flowers. Add the stem and leaves with a marker. Similarly make buildings and other pictures with squares and rectangles. Another fun activity is to take real objects, draw around the bottom, on a paper, and cut them out.
Cutting a Circle:
Cutting a circle is one of the higher cutting skills, and most children cannot do it well before the age of 5. So give your child plenty of time to learn this skill. Help the child trace out circles using plates, bowls and lids and cut out the circles. Make pictures using cut out circles. Another idea is to make homemade mobiles by cutting out circles, gluing interesting pictures on both sides, punching a hole on top, and hanging the different circles from a coat hanger.
Other Tips to Teach Scissor Use:
Thus, these are some ideas for activities for preschool scissor practice. In addition, help the child use their scissor skills to open boxes and satchels, cut twine or thread, cut open envelopes and other daily activities. If a child is struggling with scissor use initially, you can use training scissors, which have an extra pair of holes for the teacher’s fingers. Scissor use is an important skill, but most children pick it up slowly, so don’t worry if your child is not doing too well at it.
