A few weeks ago, we talked about how to teach your preschoolers how to use scissors as well as how to get the right kind of scissors in your home. Once your household has mastered the basics of having scissors and using scissors safely in a home with a preschooler, the next step is really perfecting those skills. Here are some fun (and easy) activities that will help your preschooler with his or her scissor skills.
What is Hiding Behind the Grass Activity
What is hiding behind the grass is a great activity to help your child work on his or her cutting and fine motor skills. All you need is a green piece of construction paper and a picture to hide behind the grass. You are going to cut long strips along the construction paper. If you want, you can even shape the strips by giving them pointed edges to look like blades of grass. Then, you lay the sheet of construction paper with the blades of grass over the picture. The goal is to get your child to cut the grass to figure out what is hiding behind it.
Improving Scissor Skills and Hand Strength with Playdough
This is a very simple activity that only requires playdough and scissors. Help your child roll the playdough up into long and thick pieces. Then, encourage your child to use the scissors to cut pieces of the playdough. Not only is this a fun activity for the child, but it will help strengthen his or her hand as playdough is thicker to cut through than paper.
Cutting Up Colorful Plastic Drinking Straws
Cutting up colorful plastic drinking straws is a great activity for a tiny tot who is still learning to master his or her scissor skills. After cutting up the straws, you could get some yarn and use the slivers of straw as homemade beads to make a necklace!
Homemade Cutting Worksheets
As long as you have some construction paper and something to write with, this activity is a breeze. If you aren't very artistic, you may want to consider getting some stencils too. Basically, you are just going to draw shapes on the construction paper for your child to practice cutting out. As your child gets better with his or her cutting skills, you can draw more complex shapes. If you draw more than one shape on the same piece of paper, just be careful to space them out.
Follow the Line
If your child needs help cutting a straight line, follow the line is another simple activity that can help. Just get a piece of construction paper and use a ruler to draw some straight lines on it. Make sure you space them out. Then, your child can practice cutting along the lines. As your child gets better at cutting along the lines, consider drawing zig-zag lines and curly lines to give your child something more challenging to cut.
As you can see, teaching your child to use scissors can be fun an inexpensive. You just need to get a little creative to keep your child interested in practicing his or her cutting skills.