This Fall leaf activity is a fine motor task that supports development of so many skill areas. I love that you can gather a handful of colorful leaves from your lawn and work on areas like scissor skills, fine motor skills, line awareness, and bilateral coordination. Then, you can use the snippings as leaf mulch in a compost bin or right back in the lawn. This is a fun activity that kids love! It would be a great addition to a Fall sensory bin, too. This is a powerful hole punch activity for kids.
Use colorful fall leaves to work on scissor skills with kids this Fall.
Leaf Cutting Activity
This simple leaf cutting activity can be modified to meet a variety of skill needs. You can make the lines thicker or thinner, or make curved lines or angled lines. You can cut smaller leaves or bigger leaves. It’s easy to adapt to the needs of the student.
I have a small obsession with helping kids learn how to use scissors. It was one of my favorite areas to work on in the school-based Occupational Therapy setting. (And I’ve got a few scissor skills activities to show for it!)
Add this leaf cutting activity to our other Fall leaves activities:
Leaf Handwriting– These Fall writing prompts include leaf writing prompts, among other fall themed prompts. Includes sentence prompts and single words, all with a Fall and leaf theme.
Pre-Writing Lines Activity- Work on Pre-writing activity with real leaves. Use real leaves to work on eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills, and pre-writing lines with hands on fine motor work.
Bilateral Coordination Activity: Use this Leaf Craft to address bilateral coordination skills. Use real leaves to make a craft that builds bilateral coordination, heavy work proprioceptive input, and scissor skills.
Cut Real Leaves for Scissor Skills
Let’s get on with the Fall leaves cutting activity…
Today’s activity is all about scissors, cutting on lines, and leaves. This Fall, use those pretty leaves before they are covered with snow and practice cutting on lines.
This scissor skills activity is completely easy.
Go outside and gather some pretty fall leaves. Like our leaf hole punch activity (also very good for working on scissor skills), you want leaves that are not crunchy and are freshly fallen.
You might want to gather leaves that are still on the tree for easier cutting of lines. If you are working simply on the snipping of scissors, totally go for those crunchy leaves. They provide a fun auditory feedback to the snipping of scissors and fun Fall confetti!
Cutting the leaves gets you whiffs of the leaves, too. What a great way to incorporate the sense of smell into a scissor activity.
All you need are colorful leaves for this activity!
Practice line awareness with scissors using Fall leaves
- Crepe paper scissor practice
- Re-usable calendar craft
- Cupcake liner scissor skills craft
- Cupcake liner butterfly craft
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
