Occupational Therapy

Use Fall Leaves to Practice Scissor Skills and Line Awareness

by Colleen Beck
November 7, 2015

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!)

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.

Practice scissor skills with Fall leaves to work on line awareness and scissor control.

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.

Practice line awareness with scissors using Fall leaves

Use the leaf veins to practice line awareness. I drew lines on the leaves for the kids to practice cutting along, but you can use just the lines of the leaves for older kids. Holding the small leaf and snipping along the veins is a fantastic bilateral hand coordination activity for kids. When cutting with scissors, bilateral hand coordination is essential for the assisting hand to move the paper accordingly as the dominant hand snips with scissors.

Cutting along lines in simple and complex shapes is an issue when visual perceptual skills are difficult for a child. They might demonstrate difficulties with cutting within a line. Cutting choppy lines is apparent when a child has poor scissor control or visual motor skills with tools like scissors.

Cutting leaves is a creative scissor activity (Find a ton more creative scissor activities here!) and will be a hit with your kids this Fall. Save it for spring and cut those green leaves, too!

Use this scented scissor skills activity to help kids learn graded scissor use in a fun way!