5 Activities to Prepare Your Child for Scissor Skills

 
 

Arts and crafts can easily be most kids’ favorite activity! At Champion Pediatric Therapy, we make sure your kiddos are provided with safety scissors when learning scissor skills. In addition, we also take time to work with your child on scissor safety. The basic technique of scissor skills allows your child to develop fine motor skills, and hand/finger strength. Before a child is introduced to scissor activities, we first prepare them through warm up activities and games - strengthening through play! Here are 5 activities that can help prepare your child for scissor activities at home:

  1. Rock Paper Scissors — This allows extension and retractions in kids fingers when engaging in this specific game. Scissors beat paper, paper beats rock, and rock beats scissors. 

  2. Play dough — Pull apart play dough using their fingertips and roll it into a ball. Their fingers will participate in fine motor control. Roll small pieces of dough to create and sculpt objects using fingertips.

  3. Squeeze tweezers — Pick up small objects while using tweezers or kitchen tongs and transfer them into a cup without dropping it. Egg cartons are also a fun and easy sorting container. This activity assists in the grasping technique that can imitate holding scissors in place and eventually writing.

  4. Puppet play — In this activity, use a store bought or sock puppet. When in play, the child positions their hand while depending on their wrists promotes the range of motion. Finger puppets are even better to facilitate finger isolation skills.

  5. Coloring shapes — Children use their coloring utensil to make shapes of any kind to draw lines or curvatures which mimics how scissors would cut paper. Based on where the dominant hand wants the shapes to be angled, encourages the opposing hand to guide the paper by rotating it.

Now that you child has practiced using scissors through these activities, select a good pair of safety scissors and begin cutting! If your child needs continued assistance, consult with your therapist on the best method and type of scissors for your child.