Easy way to practice cutting with scissors:
and a pair of scissors are all that you need for this easy scissor activity. I love Fiskars Blunt Tip Kid Scissors
for new scissor users, but you can see more scissor options here. 
I pulled out a handful of scissor colors for my son, just to make it fun for him. He’s a little reluctant with cutting, only because he needs more practice and he’s just not into it. Activities like this are a good way to get him interested in practicing the skills needed for accuracy with cutting shapes.
Practice Scissor Skills with Kids using Streamers!
I had my son snip the streamer into snips. He first cut the whole way across the width of the streamer so we had a ton of little pieces. Don’t worry about the mess. Picking up the shreds is a good fine motor work out too. Have your child grab up those pieces of streamer and tuck them into their hands, one at a time.
When they hold a few pieces in their palm as they gather up more little pieces using the pointer finger and thumb practices in-hand manipulation and the process of translation. Manipulating items like this from the tips of the fingers into the palm is a good way to encourage dexterity of the hands and intrinsic muscle strength.
Related Read: Use this scented scissor skills activity to help kids learn graded scissor use in a fun way!
After he cut the width of the streamer, I had him snip only half way across the width of the streamer. This made a fringe the length of the crepe paper.
Cutting only half way encourages motor planning and controlled movements of the scissors. What a great way to practice opening and closing those scissor blades with control.
Managing the streamer with the assisting hand requires bilateral hand coordination to hold the streamer and move the fingers along as he continued snipping.
To make this task even more difficult, have the child cut the length of the streamer. Cutting a longer distance requires endurance of the hand muscles and controlled motor planning to manipulate the streamer with the helper hand as the child snips down the center of the streamer. Older kids who need to work on eye-hand coordination would benefit from this task.
Unfortunately, the images of the process of cutting didn’t make the cut (see what I did there??) with fuzzy pictures. I wouldn’t want to hurt your eyes with my bad photography skills. We’ll be doing this task again with my Little Guy so I’m hoping to catch a few images and add them at some point. Let us know if you try this activity with your child!
Looking for more scissor activities? We’ve got a bunch to share:
- Scissor Skills: Activities for Kids
- Improving Scissor Skills with Play Dough
- Cutting Foam Beads
- Using Stickers to Help with Scissor Skills
- Finger-painting Fireworks for Scissor Use
- Icicle Winter Scissor Skills Activity
- Bunny Tongs Scissor Skills Activity
- Color Sorting Scissor Activity
- You would LOVE our gift guide for toys to help with scissor skills for lots of ideas!
that all needed washing. Instead of putting them in the sink, I put them in our 
right on the dining room floor. Some warm soapy water and we were ready to clean and explore baby’s things.
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is a book about Olive, a dog who thinks she must be a reindeer after she hears a tune with the words, “All of the other reindeer”. She heads off to the North Pole to help Santa and the reindeer on Christmas and surprises all of them with her reindeer skills. At the end of the book, Santa gives Olive her very own pair of antlers. This is a book we read every Christmas…for the fun story, the cute pictures, and the adorableness of Olive; She’s our favorite dog-reindeer!
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to decorate those lids. The fine motor benefits of a child and a roll of tape are immense; There are a TON of fine motor dexterity skills that can occur by allowing a child to use tape. A neat pincer grasp is required to pinch and grasp the sticky tape, while using the other, non-dominant hand to grasp the dispenser just right. Pulling the tape and tearing it at the metal teeth of the tape dispenser requires controlled motor movements and eye-hand coordination. Children will inevitably pull and pull and pull the tape when they first begin using a roll of tape, unassisted. That’s ok! They learn as they play and a roll of tape is a fun and creative way to practice fine motor skill. 
