Elmer the Elephant Activities

Elmer the Elephant activities

Elmer the patchwork elephant looks different than his friends. Through stories and colorful pictures that depict everyday elephant life, Elmer the elephant teaches us about diversity and differences. Elmer teaches us about acceptance, friendship, and empathy. Check out the Elmer the Elephant activity below that builds a baseline for these important skills, but also helps kids with fine motor skills, visual perceptual skills, and visual motor skills.

If you love the Elmer books as much as we do, then you will adore this Elmer the Elephant activity. We LOVE Elmer the Elephant…and all of the Elmer books. Every time we go to the library, we are sure to check the shelf for a new Elmer book that we may have missed. This week’s book activity was so much fun to do with the kids, because it involved one of our favorite books (ever) and a great visual perception activity. Add this book activity to your list of crafts based on children’s books that build skills through reading.

Elmer the Elephant Activity

This fine motor craft is a powerful one because it not only builds essential visual perceptual, visual motor, and fine motor skills, but it teaches as well. This Elmer the elephant activity can be used to illustrate differences, empathy, and friendship. Here are more books that teach empathy and friendship that can be used in therapy sessions or in the classroom or home.

They loved creating and building our very own Elmer craft. Elmer’s colors made for a great way to help kids build fine motor skills and visual motor skills, too. I loved throwing in the scissor work portion of the activity and working on a few important skills. My youngest daughter worked on her color identification and sorting.  The colors in Elmer’s patchwork skin are perfect for Toddlers to practice naming colors.  Little Guy was loving the puzzle-building portion of our activity.  The lines were a great way to work on a few visual perceptual skills needed for handwriting.  

Elmer the elephant activity that uses the Elmer children's book as a guide and activity to help kids understand acceptance, differences, and diversity while building fine motor skills.

Elmer the Patchwork Elephant Activity

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If you haven’t read Elmer by David McKee, this is definitely a book you need to check out.  Elmer is a patchwork elephant with many colors.  He sticks out from the crowd of gray elephants. By exploring and interacting with his community of elephants, Elmer and the other elephants learn to accept and value his unique characteristics. Elmer is not only a colorful patchwork elephant. He is funny, smart, caring, and an individual. The book teaches us to accept differences because those differences are what make us who we are.

Elmer teaches us about diversity. He teaches us about identity and tolerance. We all have different colors, shapes, interests, abilities, talents, and ideas. Those differences are what make us special. Let’s see those differences, accept them, and celebrate them!

We made our own patchwork elephant with lots of colors and had a great time building and creating while talking about color names.  This was such a great activity for both Little Guy and Baby Girl.

Try this Elmer the Elephant activity to teach children skills like scissor use and fine motor development with a wonderful children's book.


We started with Foam Sheets in lots of different colors.  You might have seen our color sorting scissor activity post where we practiced our scissor skills.  These squares came in handy for this Elmer activity.

Create an Elmer the Elephant activity using foam pieces to teach children about empathy and acceptance of differences in others while building fine motor and visual motor skills.

 I found a picture frame at the Dollar Store that has an acrylic front, instead of glass.  This is a great writing surface using a white board marker.  I drew an outline of Elmer with the marker.  We had a little bowl of water and started sticking the foam squares onto the surface to build our Elmer.  When the foam pieces are dunked into water, they stick really well to the picture frame surface.  We did a version of this way back when our blog began with our rainbow building activity.

Fine motor activity for the book, Elmer the Elephant.

Visual Perception Activity for Kids

There were fingers everywhere, adding patchwork squares!  Little Guy and I quizzed Baby Girl on her colors as we worked.  It was a fun puzzle to get the squares fitting into the outline.  What a great way to work on visual perceptual skills, fine motor precision, dexterity, and line awareness!

Visual perceptual skills in kids are necessary for so many things…from self-care to fine motor skills, to gross motor skills…all parts of a child’s development require visual perception.  There are many pieces to the giant term of “visual perception”.  This Elmer building activity works on quite a few of these areas:

Visual Discrimination is determining differences in color, form, size, shape…Finding different sized squares to fit into the outline of our Elmer, discriminating the different colors, and shapes are a great way to work on this area. 

Visual Closure is the ability to fill in parts of a form in the mind’s eye to determine shape or a whole object.  Filling in the missing parts of our Elmer works on this area.

Visual Spatial Relations is organizing the body in relation to objects or spatial awareness.  This is an important part of handwriting.  Spacing those pieces amongst the others and in relation to the lines is one way to work on this skill.

Visual Figure Ground is the ability to locate objects within a cluttered area (think “I Spy”).  Finding a red square among the pile of foam pieces is one fun way to work on this area of visual perception.

Use this fine motor activity with the book Elmer the Elephant to help kids learn abstract concepts while building visual perception.

  Little Guy was really into this activity.  He loved lining up the squares to make our Elmer.

Elmer the Elephant puzzle that kids can do to build skills in occupational therapy sessions or in the classroom or home.

We loved how our Elmer turned out!  We’ll be using our frame again, soon.  I can think of so many fun ways to learn and play with this dollar store frame and a marker!

Elmer the Elephant book and Elmer activity for kids

More Elmer the Elephant Activities

Elmer the elephant activities for kids based on the children's book, Elmer the Elephant


Check out some of these Elmer the Elephant activities for kids. They are powerful ways to build awareness, acceptance, and friendship through the book and activity.

Elmer the Elephant activity with facepaint

Use face paint to celebrate friendship with a face painting party based on the Elmer the Elephant book.

Elmer the elephant craft

Make an Elmer craft using puppets to celebrate differences, diversity, and uniqueness in a great lesson for kids, while building fine motor skills.

Create an Elmer craft using stamp painting.

Create an Elmer the patchwork elephant craft using paint to make a paint stamped elephant craft. What a great way to build fine motor skills!

Elmer the elephant preschool craft

Kids can trace their bodies with large pieces of paper and then fill the space with colorful paper squares to celebrate uniqueness in this Elmer the Elephant preschool activity.

Teach Acceptance, Differences, and Diversity

Want to take complex and abstract concepts like empathy, acceptance, uniqueness, and diversity to the next level with kids? This digital, E-BOOK, Exploring Books Through Play: 50 Activities Based on Books About Friendship, Acceptance and Empathy is filled with hands-on activities rooted in interactive, hands-on, sensory play that focus on creating a well-rounded early childhood education supporting growth in literacy, mathematics, science, emotional and social development, artistic expression, sensory exploration, gross motor development and fine motor skills.

Kids can explore books while building specific skills in therapy sessions, as part of home programs, or in the home. is an amazing resource for anyone helping kids learn about acceptance, empathy, compassion, and friendship.

In this book, you’ll find therapist-approved resources, activities, crafts, projects, and play ideas based on 10 popular children’s books. Each book covered contains activities designed to develop fine motor skills, gross motor skills, sensory exploration, handwriting, and more. Help kids understand complex topics of social/emotional skills, empathy, compassion, and friendship through books and hands-on play.

Click here to get the book and add children’s books based on social emotional learning to your therapy practice, home activities, or classroom.

Exploring books through play is a guide to using children's books in therapy and while building developmental skills.

More books to teach social emotional skills

Check out our other posts in the Preschool Book Club Series for activities based on favorite books:

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.

Easter Scissor Skills Activity for Kids

occupational therapy tools for building scissor skills in kids and helping children to cut with scissors with a fun Easter fine motor activity.

This Easter scissor skills activity for kids is a creative way to work on scissor skills with kids this time of year. Coming up with Easter ideas for kids doesn’t need to be difficult. Use a few items found at your dollar store to help kids address skills like bilateral coordination, graded precision with scissor control, and eye-hand coordination and other fine motor skills. In fact, adding this fine motor activity to an Easter or Spring craft session can be a fun way to build specific skills in a fun way.  

This is a quick and easy scissor activity to add to your occupational therapy toolkit. We used a plastic Easter egg and Easter grass (the kind that is used to fill Easter baskets) to work on basic scissor skills like opening and shutting the scissors and using the non-dominant helper hand in a fun cutting activity.

occupational therapy tools for building scissor skills in kids and helping children to cut with scissors with a fun Easter fine motor activity.

Easter Activity for Kids

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You’ll need just a few materials for this scissor activity:  

A scissor activity that is easy to create is a great activity for the Occupational Therapist’s therapy toolkit.  We used plastic Easter eggs from our Easter supply bin to hold a long strand of Easter grass.  Both of these items can be found at your dollar store, making this a frugal way to address scissor skills.   

This Easter activities for kids doubles as a scissor skills activity to help kids cut with graded precision and accuracy.

To create this Easter themed scissor activity, open up the plastic egg.  Then, place a long strand of Easter grass in the egg and thread one end of the grass through the hole in the egg.  Most plastic Easter eggs have a small hole in one end.  If yours doesn’t, then this activity won’t work.  Simply look for an egg with the hole in one end of the plastic egg.   And that’s it!

You now have an Easter-themed scissor activity ready for practicing basic scissor skills.

This Easter activity for kids doubles as a scissor skills activity to build precision and accuracy with cutting with scissors.

Occupational therapy Tools and SKills

There are a myriad number of skills that an occupational therapist can address in kids. Occupational therapists address the underlying skills that interfere with function and occupation. Those OT skills include of fine motor strength, dexterity, stability, coordination, visual perception, sensory processing…the list goes on and on when it comes to meaningful occupations and the occupational therapy tools that address these areas..

One such occupational therapy area that this OT tool addresses are independence with using scissor as well as precision with scissors in their dominant hand. Kids can hold the egg in one hand while managing bilateral coordination, precision, laterality and more. They can pull out the Easter grass through the egg and work on cutting bits of the grass.  With a small piece of Easter grass sticking out of the egg, kids can address precision grasp and release when using scissors during cutting tasks.     The egg makes a great grasping tool for younger kids.  While use of scissors requires children to hold onto and manipulate paper with their non-dominant hand, holding the egg promotes a power grasp with arch development during this cutting with scissors.    

Pulling the strand of grass out of the egg is a nice way to work on neat pincer grasp and threading more into the plastic egg’s hole is an excellent way to encourage fine motor development. Here are more Spring fine motor activities to keep your little ones busy and working on hand strength and dexterity this time of year.   

Use this Easter activity for kids to help with scissor skills as a fine motor activity that pairs nicely with Easter crafts for preschoolers and school aged kids.
Use this Easter activity for preschoolers or older kids to work on scissor skills and teaching kids to cut with scissors.

Looking for more creative scissor skills activities?  Try these:

 
 
 
    
 
Teach kids Scissor skills and accuracy with cutting with scissors with this easy Easter activity for kids.

Spring Fine Motor Kit

Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!

Developing hand strength, dexterity, dexterity, precision skills, and eye-hand coordination skills that kids need for holding and writing with a pencil, coloring, and manipulating small objects in every day task doesn’t need to be difficult. The Spring Fine Motor Kit includes 100 pages of fine motor activities, worksheets, crafts, and more:

Spring fine motor kit set of printable fine motor skills worksheets for kids.
  • Lacing cards
  • Sensory bin cards
  • Hole punch activities
  • Pencil control worksheets
  • Play dough mats
  • Write the Room cards
  • Modified paper
  • Sticker activities
  • MUCH MORE

Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Spring Fine Motor Kit
Spring Fine Motor Kit: TONS of resources and tools to build stronger hands.

Grab your copy of the Spring Fine Motor Kit and build coordination, strength, and endurance in fun and creative activities. Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

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.

Place Value Scarecrow Craft

Scarecrow craft to help with math skills

Need a math craft idea that is perfect for this time of year? Look no further. This scarecrow craft can be used for any grade or age. Kids can be resistant to practicing extra math facts and practicing skills that they’ve learned in school or homeschool.  But often times, math skills like adding and composing numbers up to 1000 in this second grade math activity NEED additional practicing at home.  So how do you get that extra practice in without pulling teeth (or pulling out your own hair!)??  Playful Math activities make learning and practicing skills fun. We made this Math Scarecrow Craft to practice second grade math, including place value and composing numbers…but you can make it age-appropriate for preschool on up through elementary-aged kids.

 

Make this Scarecrow craft this Fall and practice math facts and addition or subtraction.  This is perfect for second grade math or any preschool or elementary age student, and a fantastic scissor skill exercise for kids.
 
 


Scarecrow Craft

 
This post contains affiliate links.  
 
To make this scarecrow craft, you’ll need a few materials:
Ivory Cardstock
scissors (THESE are my favorite brand and what I always recommended as a school-based OT!)
glue
Goldenrod cardstock
orange cardstock
Buttons, paper scraps, ribbons, etc.
Brown Paper Bag
 
Make this Scarecrow craft this Fall and practice math facts and addition or subtraction.  This is perfect for second grade math or any preschool or elementary age student, and a fantastic scissor skill exercise for kids.
 
To make the scarecrow craft (and totally sneak math into this Fall craft):


Scarecrow Craft for Kids

First, snip the Goldenrod cardstock into long strips about 1/2 inch wide.  Cutting the cardstock in long cutting lines is an excellent exercise in scissor skills.  The cardstock provides a thicker resistance than construction or printer paper.  This added resistance provides feedback to kids who are working on line awareness and smooth cutting lines.  
 
You can draw lines on the cardstock with a pencil/pen, or if the child needs more assistance with scissor skills, make the lines with a thick marker.  Cutting the long strips of cardstock require the child to open/shut the scissors with smooth cutting strokes as they cut along the lines.  Cutting all of the hair straw strands for the scarecrow craft is quite an exercise in scissor skills!
 
Next, you’ll have the child cut a large circle from the Ivory Cardstock.  We used a bowl and traced a circle, but you could also have the child draw their own circle.  This will become the face of the scarecrow.  Cutting a circle with smooth cutting strokes is a more difficult task for children than cutting strait lines.  Kids may need verbal and physical prompts to cut along the curved line with accuracy.
 
You can draw a hat-ish shape from the brown paper bag.  I say hat-ISH because a scarecrow often has a floppy and battered hat on his head, so a hat shape that looks mostly like a hat is just about perfect for this scarecrow craft!  
 
Kids can cut the hat shape and may require more assistance with this part.  Cutting a material like a brown paper bag is more difficult than cutting regular printer paper, so the flimsy-ness of the paper requires more skill and accuracy with scissor control and line awareness.  
 
Jagged lines make this scarecrow look authentic, though, so feel free to add more snips and cuts into the hat, too!
 
Make this Scarecrow craft this Fall and practice math facts and addition or subtraction.  This is perfect for second grade math or any preschool or elementary age student, and a fantastic scissor skill exercise for kids.
 
Next, you will crumble up the paper hat shape.  My daughter really got into this part. “Crumble up this paper?? Awwww Yeah!”
 
Crumbling paper is a great fine motor strengthening exercise for children.  They really strengthen the intrinsic muscles of their hands with paper crumpling.  What a workout this scarecrow craft is!
 
Glue the hat in place on the scarecrow’s head.

 

Make this Scarecrow craft this Fall and practice math facts and addition or subtraction.  This is perfect for second grade math or any preschool or elementary age student, and a fantastic scissor skill exercise for kids.
 

Scarecrow Math Craft

 
To make the hair of the scarecrow, glue the goldenrod strips on the head and along the hat.  Cut a triangle from the orange cardstock for the scarecrow’s nose.  Use buttons, paper scraps, and ribbons to dress up your scarecrow, adding eyes, mouth, and any other decorations.  We received the buttons we used to make the eyes from our pals at www.craftprojectideas.com.  Add a smile and your scarecrow is ready to decorate walls and doorways this Fall!
 
But wait!  Make this cute scarecrow into a Math activity that the kids will Fall in love with.  Yep, I went there.
 


Place Value Craft

To incorporate math into this scarecrow craft, use those paper strips.  We made this activity perfect for practicing second grade addition skills.  
 
My second grader has been working on building numbers up to 1000.  On the strips, I wrote a three digit number on the end of many of the paper strips.  She then chose different ways to describe that number.  She wrote out the number in words on some strips.  
 
On other strips, she built the three digit number using Common Core strategies.  For example, I wrote the number 421 on one strip.  She demonstrated how to “build” that number by writing “400 + 20 + 1”.  This technique helped her practice skills she’s learned at school while understanding what makes up a three digit number.  She was able to identify the hundreds, tens, and ones in a three digit number.  Work on and discuss place value and number order with this activity.
 

The nice thing about this scarecrow craft is that you can adjust the math to fit any age…or just make the craft without the math facts for a super cute Fall Scarecrow!

 
Make this Scarecrow craft this Fall and practice math facts and addition or subtraction.  This is perfect for second grade math or any preschool or elementary age student, and a fantastic scissor skill exercise for kids.
 

Scarecrow Math Tips

How can you make this Math Scarecrow Craft work for your child’s needs?  Try these ideas:
 
  • Adjust the activity slightly by working on math facts.  Write a number on the end of the strip and ask your child to write the addition or subtraction problem on the length of the hair.
  • Write the SAME number on the end of each strip.  Ask your child to write each strip with different math addition problems that make up different ways to reach the number.  For example, write the number 16 on each strip.  Your child can write 8+8 on one strip, and other strips with 10+6, 12+4, 20-4, etc.

More Scarecrow Activities

Looking for more scarecrow activities? Below are scarecrow activities for kids that cover a variety of areas: math, language arts, art, and more. 
 
Stop by and see what our friends have come up with using this week’s Scarecrow theme:
 
Scarecrow Syllables for Second Grade – Use a scarecrow activity to help with early literacy skills in this creative scarecrow activity from Look! We’re Learning! 
  
Scarecrow Measures – Another scarecrow math activity, this one from Crafty Kids at Home is a fun addition to a Fall themed learning plan. 
 
Scarecrow Silhouette Art Project – A Scarecrow craft that the kids will love is fun to add to your therapy plan. Use this idea from School Time Snippets. 
 
Scarecrow Compound Word Match Game – Work on more literacy using this idea from Creative Family Fun.
 
Scarecrow Craft with Landscape Another scarecrow craft the kids will love, use this one from Sallie Borrink Learning to work on scissor skills, too.
 
 

More of our Creative Math ideas:

Ghost Craft to Work on Scissor Skills

Looking for ideas to work on scissor skills? Do you need a quick craft idea to add to your therapy line up to address skills like scissor use, bilateral coordination, hand strength, or visual motor skills? This Ghost Craft is a fun Halloween craft idea that kids can do while boosting the skills they need for scissor skills and other fine motor skills. Use this ghost craft idea to work on occupational therapy activities and OT goal areas in a fun and festive way, perfect for Fall activities and ghost theme therapy ideas! Here is another quick and fun ghost craft that will boost those fine motor skills. 

Use this ghost craft to work on scissor skills with kids, the perfect halloween craft for a ghost theme occupational therapy activity that boosts fine motor skills and scissor use including bilateral coordination and the visual motor skills needed for cutting with scissors.

Ghost Craft to Work on Scissor Skills

This scissor skills craft is an easy craft to set up and one that you can pull together in in no time, making it a nice craft for on-the-go school based OTs looking for a ghost themed craft that addresses OT goal areas. Kiddos will love this ghost craft as it’s a cute craft idea that is motivating. In fact, kids won’t even realize they are working on skills like hand strength, separation of the sides of the hand, arch development, scissor use, or bilateral coordination. 
Here are more bilateral coordination activities that you can try.

Kids will love this ghost craft for a halloween craft that works on scissor skills in kids.

Ghost Craft for Kids

To create this ghost craft and work on scissor skills as well as fine motor skills, you will need only a few materials (affiliate links are included below):
Paper or cardstock
Marker
Scissors (These scissors are therapist-approved!)
Hole Punch Here is a reduced effort hole punch, perfect for kids or those working on building hand strength.
Kids can make this ghost craft to work on scissor skills and hand strength with a ghost theme this halloween, the fun ghost craft that helps kids cut with scissors.
First, it’s important to talk about where to start with know what a child can benefit from when it comes to paper type (construction paper, printer paper, cardstock, and other paper types all play important parts in addressing needs in scissor skills. Read about the various paper choices in addressing scissor skills in our scissor skills crash course
In that crash course, you’ll also find information related to line thickness when it comes to teaching kids to move through the stages of scissor skills. 
Use this ghost craft to work on scissor skills and other fine motor skills, perfect for a halloween craft or ghost theme in occupational therapy activities.

Steps to Make a Ghost Craft and Work on Scissor Skills

To make this ghost craft (and boost those scissor skills), simply draw a semi circle on the edge of a piece of paper. 
Ask kids to cut out out the ghost craft along the curved line. You can draw visual cues on the paper to cue kids on where to hold the paper as they turn the paper while cutting.
Next, draw or ask the child to draw circles for the mouth and two eyes. They can then use the hole punch to punch holes inside the circles of the eyes and mouth. 
This ghost craft works on scissor skills and fine motor skills needed for cutting with scissors, using a ghost theme for halloween craft ideas in occupational therapy activities.


Graded Scissor Skills Craft

There are several ways to grade this ghost craft to make the craft easier or more difficult depending on the child’s needs:
  • Use lighter or heavier paper grades. Some ideas are tissue paper, newspaper, wrapping paper, paper towels, or coffee filters to make the craft more difficult. Some ideas to make the ghost craft easier include cardstock, manilla folders, poster board, or thin cardboard.
  • Add more details to the ghost craft such as a bottom that the child needs to cut along a 90 degree angle to cut the bottom of the ghost. 
  • Add a wavy line to the bottom to require more details and scissor movement. 
  • Make larger or smaller ghosts.
Looking for more scissor skills crafts? Try these: 
Kids will love this fun ghost craft in occupational therapy activities this fall, use this ghost craft idea to work on scissor skills and other fine motor skills in occupational therapy activities.

Use scissors and a hole punch to work on the fine motor skills and scissor skills with this ghost craft.

Scented Scissor Skills Activity

Cut rose petals for a scented activity that develops scissor skills! All you need are real rose petals that fall from a rose bush (or onto your counter top from a vase of roses!) Kids can cut the rose petals with scissors to work on many aspects of scissor skills.

This scented scissor skills activity is one that the kids will love! Picking rose petals and then using them to cut is a creative way to address skills like graded scissor use, line awareness, and precision in grasp and scissor accuracy. Kids will love using rose petals to work on scissor accuracy and the visual motor skills needed for scissor use and the scent of rose petals will make it a memorable activity they will want to do again and again! 
 

Scented Scissor Skills Activity

 
 
 
Use rose petals to work on scissor skills with kids
 
Cutting rose petals is something we’ve done for years and years around here. It’s a creative way to use scissors to address skills needed for cutting shapes and lines with graded precision. You can read about more creative ideas to address scissor skills and accuracy here on The OT Toolbox. 
 
When there is a vase of flowers in the house, there will be petals to cut!
 
If you’ve had flowers in the house, then you know that the beautiful scent and colors only last so long. Before the flowers go into the trash or compost, use them to help kids work on fine motor skills and scissor work. 
 
You’ll need just a couple of flowers to get a lot of scissor practice!
 
Affiliate links are used in this post. 
 
Use rose petals to work on scissor skills with kids
 

Cut Rose petal Activity

 
First, ask the child to help you peel and pick off the layers of the rose petals. Add them to a tray or a large bowl. Using such a delicate grasp to pick and peel off flower petals helps with graded precision and bilateral coordination, both which are needed for scissor use and accuracy.
 
Then, you are ready to start snipping! 
 
There are many types of scissors out there. When I am teaching kids to use scissors, I always recommend these scissors. They are perfect for the child who is learning how to hold scissors and how to cut with accuracy.
 
The blades of these scissors are nice for children who have trouble with positioning and are just learning to hold the scissors with a neutral wrist positioning. 
 
To work on line awareness and precision with this scissor skill activity, use a pencil to lightly draw a line on the flower petals. Children can cut along the lines to snip the petals. Or, skip the lines and just invite the child to snip the petals into small pieces. 
 
This scissor skills activity provides a beautiful scent when cutting the petals. It’s sure to be a memorable one, triggering the child’s memory of cutting along lines when they smell and recognize the scent of roses at another time in the future!
 

Preschool Scissor Activity

Cutting rose petals is a great preschool activity to support the development of scissor skills. Simply fill a sensory bin with rose petals and add a pair of scissors. It’s an inviting activity young children will love.
 
Looking for more ways to work on scissor skills? Try these: 
 
 
 attention behavior and scissor skills
 
 
 

 

Use rose petals to work on scissor skills with kids

If you are looking for strategies, tips, and ideas to help kids with scissor skills, you will love The Scissor Skills Book.

Get your copy of The Scissor Skills Book today!

The Scissor Skills Book helps kids develop the skills they need to cut with scissors.

Functional Skills for Kids

As an Occupational Therapist, function is the number one goal for working with clients. Whether in the school, clinic, acute setting, or home, all goals of an Occupational Therapist revolve and are based on functional skills. 


One thing about occupational therapy professionals is that we love to be creative. I love to use my experience and knowledge to come up with creative ways to meet common goal areas. Take a look around this site and you will find everything from DIY pencil grips to a “egg-cellent” way to work on shoe tying.

Be sure to check out this massive shoe tying resource, too.

Whether there is a diagnosis or not, a developmental delay or not, or just an area of weakness or strength…Kids can build on their strengths to modify, adapt, and address goal areas with one thing in mind: Functional Independence.
 
This is a place to guide you to areas of functional skill with hopes to bring kids closer to confidence and independence.



This is the place where you will find all of activities designed to promote functional skills of kids. From handwriting to scissor skills, to dressing, and self-care:  click around to find a lot of ideas to build independence, adapt, accommodate, and modify functional skills.

Functional Skills for Kids and independence in kids for self-care tasks like dressing, feeding, clothing fasteners, and more.
 
This post contains affiliate links.

 

Functional Skills for Kids and Childhood Independence



Functional Skills for Kids series by Occupational Therapist and Physical Therapist bloggers


Handwriting Functional Skills


Scissor Skills


Self-Dressing Skills


Shoe Tying


Zippering


Buttoning


Toys to Help Kids Learn to Dress Themselves


Potty Training


Kids Cooking Tasks

Play


Self-Feeding

Functional Skills for Kids and independence in kids for self-care tasks like dressing, feeding, clothing fasteners, and more.

 

You’ll love these resources on helping kids thrive in all aspects of theri occupational performance:

the handwriting book The OT Toolbox
The Handwriting Book is a resource for meeting the needs of every individual when it comes to all aspects of handwriting.
The Toilet training Book, a developmental look at potty training from the OT and PT perspectives
The Toilet Training Book is a developmental look at potty training from the perspectives of occupational therapy and physical therapy practitioners.
scissor skills book
The Scissor Skills Book teaches all aspects of cutting with scissors, from form to function.

Teach Kids How to Slow Down to Cut on Lines With Scissors

If you’ve ever tried to teach kids how to cut with scissors, you may have ended up with a snipped finger or two.  Teaching kids how to cut on lines can be a tricky thing.  When children with attention or behavior difficulties are learning to cut with scissors, it can be quite difficult to hand over a pair of scissors when there may be a safety concern. 



Cutting with scissors can induce anxiety in the most calm of teachers, parents, and therapists when they turn over a pair of sharp scissors to a child with attention or behavioral concerns.    

You’ll find tons of scissor skills activities here.



Below, you’ll find tricks and tools to teach kids with attention or behavioral concerns how to slow down to cut on lines with scissors.  The tips in this post will enable children of all ages how to slow down and cut on the lines with scissors in order to complete classroom, art, and craft projects.  

How to teach kids how to slow down and cut on the lines with modifications and accommodations for sensory, visual, fine motor, difficulties due to behavioral and attention problems.

Attention, Behavior, and Cutting with Scissors

Scissor use and accuracy has a lot to do with visual perceptual skills. You’ll find easy and fun ways to work on visual perceptual skills through play here. 

The attentive process helps us determine which sensations (cutting through a piece of paper) are relevant to an individual.  Attention allows us to process information in order to complete functional tasks. When we attend to a task such as cutting on a line through the whole shape, we make a decision to pay attention and this effort and concentration allows us to process the task and make adjustments to the task at hand and to future processing of information.


RELATED READ: Simple Trick to Help Kids Turn the Paper When Cutting With Scissors


By deciding what to pay attention to, a person decides what information is transferred from sensory input and sensory memories into meaningful information that is stored for future use. 


Likewise, children who are not able to make decisions about behavior or attention levels due to sensory or physical difficulties will have trouble attending to the line, paper, scissor position, or seating position.  


Attention requires an ability to respond to priority information while disregarding and inhibiting simultaneous sensory input.  This concept of attentional ability coincides with an individual’s cognitive, sensory, and physical abilities. 

How to Teach Kids to Cut on the Lines With Scissors



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Children are able to learn to hold and snip with scissors at an early age. Around two years old is a great time to hand over a pair of safety scissors.  However, children with decreased attention or behavioral difficulties can affect that optimal age of introducing scissor activities. 

How to teach kids how to slow down and cut on the lines with modifications and accommodations for sensory, visual, fine motor, difficulties due to behavioral and attention problems.

 

Attention needs for using scissors

When kids use scissors, they need many skills in order to hold and use scissors appropriately.  There is a safety concern as well, and attention has a lot to do with accuracy and ability to adequately use a pair of scissors to cut lines or shapes:


Visual Attention needed for cutting with scissors– The ability to attend to a line while focusing on cutting along the line with the hands moving in the appropriate way to open and close the scissors and manipulate the paper requires visual attention and visual motor integration skills. To hold the paper, and remember to open and close the scissor blades allow a child to cut a line that makes up a shape.  


Bilateral hand use needed for cutting with scissors– A child who can not adequately use both hands together in a coordinated manner while each hand performs a different task will have trouble holding paper with their non-dominant hand as they manipulate a pair of scissors. 


Visual Motor Integration needed for cutting with scissors– Visual Motor Integration allows the hands and eyes to work together in an effective way.  Efficient coordination of the vision system and the motor system requires both of these parts to work well and to work well together.  The visual system requires all aspects of visual perception to work well and the motor system requires positioning, strength, dexterity, and manipulation to work in coordination. If one of these parts is not functioning effectively, a child might exhibit difficulty managing paper, scissors, or body/scissor positioning in coordination with the visual stimuli of lines, shapes, and cutting tasks.


Oculomotor Control needed for cutting with scissors– When we move our eyes to look at items in our field of vision, we use the muscles surrounding the eyes in order to rotate, look up, down, left, and right.  If there is a problem with development or use of these muscles, a person will exhibit poor control of eye movements.  This problem will result in poor visual tracking skills.  This leads to trouble with following scissors as they cut through paper, difficulty maintaining contact with a line, and difficulty with moving the eyes over the mid-line of the paper.  An individual with poor oculomotor control may also show difficulty with convergence as they attempt to focus on scissors and paper close together in the mid-line area at a near distance.  

Cutting with scissors requires an individual to look down and toward the middle as their eyes rotate inward. A child with oculomotor control will exhibit attention difficulties, poor visual attention, inaccurate eye-hand coordination, poor visual tracking, and loss of place while cutting with scissors.


Auditory Processing needed for cutting with scissors– A child with auditory processing disorder might shoe difficulty when cutting with scissors when given verbal prompts or directions.  They might mishear information due to an inability to disregard background noise.  This might lead to inattention during scissor tasks.


Visual Attention needed for cutting with scissors– Paying attention to the task at hand in front of a child can be difficult if that individual has difficulty focusing on the paper, scissors, and the lines while discerning important visual sensory input and disregarding background or peripheral information. 


Intact kinesthetic, tactile, visual, proprioceptive sensory systems needed for cutting with scissors– Integration of these sensory systems and the ability to process sensory input appropriately enable a person to use scissors while attending to input.  Kids who are seeking proprioceptive sensory input may exhibit 


When attention or behavior difficulties occur, a child may present in many ways while cutting with scissors:

These problem areas will interfere with cutting on lines.

  • Impulsive, cutting very quickly
  • Cutting with disregard for the lines
  • Cutting and omitting the corners and curves of shapes
  • Cutting with choppy cuts
  • Tearing the paper
  • Cutting and tearing the paper as a result of frustration
  • When snipping paper, using scissors to cut a helping parent, teacher, or therapist
  • Demonstrating visual distraction (paying attention to visual distractions in the classroom or home environment)
  • Demonstrating auditory distraction (paying attention to auditory sensory input from the classroom or home environment)
  • Cutting alongside the line or crossing over the line as a result of difficulty focusing on the scissors position or cutting lines due to difficulty with oculomotor control
  • Difficulty maintaining scissor position
  • Difficulty holding and manipulating the paper with the assisting hand
  • Inappropriate seating position as a result of sensory needs 
  • Difficulty stopping when cutting into a piece of paper to cut a fringe
  • Difficulty grading the opening and shutting of the scissor blades
Related Read: Use this scented scissor skills activity to help kids learn graded scissor use in a fun way! 
How to teach kids how to slow down and cut on the lines with modifications and accommodations for sensory, visual, fine motor, difficulties due to behavioral and attention problems.

How can a child with attentional or behavioral difficulties overcome deficits to complete a scissor activity given modifications or adjustments? There are many accommodations that can be made to meet the needs of these individuals to prevent impulsivity, choppy snips, and torn paper.

How to teach kids how to slow down and cut on the lines with modifications and accommodations for sensory, visual, fine motor, difficulties due to behavioral and attention problems.

Accommodations and Modifications to Help Kids Cut on the Lines

Try these tips to teach kids to cut on lines.  These strategies will help children with attention or behavior problems, or other underlying difficulties.  These are also great tips and tools to help typically developing children learn to cut on lines when cutting shapes.
  1. Use bright paper with dark lines for a high contrast cutting line to help with poor oculomotor control  and visual distractions.
  2. Make lines bolder using a thick black marker.
  3. Explore different types of scissors based on the need of the individual. Spring action scissors to help children with difficulty attending to graded scissor motions or attention to opening and closing the scissor blades. This pair is great for kids.
  4. Verbal cues to slow cutting speed
  5. Provide concise and concrete directions.
  6. Visual cues: Darkened lines, thick and bold cutting lines, stickers to show where to stop and turn the paper, stickers to follow when cutting and turning the paper. Read more about this trick here.
  7. Provide a small movement break between tasks.
  8. Hand over hand physical cues. These training scissors are a great way to practice with hand-over-hand assistance.
  9. Reduce visual distractions: Provide a quiet space for scissor work, use desk dividers, reduce classroom decorations or distracting stimuli, and clear desk or table surface from all items. Find more information on attention in the classroom and home environments here.
  10. place desk away from windows, doors, and the pencil sharpener.
  11. Reduce auditory stimulation. Provide headphones or position desk away from noisy centers of the room.
  12. Develop active listening skills and direction following through eye contact and and upright body position.
  13. Try a stability cushion
  14. Provide thicker paper for increased resistance an more tactile and proprioceptive feedback while cutting. More resistive materials include oaktag, index cards, construction paper, and paper bags.
  15. Try gluing worksheets and cutting pages to thicker paper like cardstock.
  16. Trial graded and physical, verbal, and auditory prompts.
  17. Ensure the cutting task is purposeful and meaningful in order to maintain motivation.
  18. For the child with oculomotor convergence insufficiency, try holding the paper up higher or using a bold cutting line.
 

The Scissor Skills Book 

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Ten Occupational Therapists and Physical Therapists have gotten together to write The Scissor Skills Book.  It’s a book with resources for every underlying area needed for scissor use.  It’s got tons of motor activities to address the areas needed for scissor skills.  There are pages and pages of accommodations and creative ways to work on scissor use.  This e-book is a giant resource for anyone who works with kids on cutting with scissors!

The therapists behind the Functional Skills for Kids series include a team of 10 pediatric physical and occupational therapists with years of experience in the field.  Together, we have created the ultimate resource for tips, strategies, suggestions, and information to support scissor skill development in children.  Read more about The Scissor Skills Book here

 
The Scissor Skills Book is a resource for working on using scissors with kids
The launch week discount lasts from May 1- May 8. Get The Scissor Skills Book on sale now!
 
The Scissor Skills Book is an 81 page PDF document that is delivered electronically.  The book includes the following chapters:
Chapter 1: Developmental Progression of Scissor Skills
Chapter 2: Teaching Your Child to Use Scissors
Chapter 3: Gross Motor and Scissor Skills
Chapter 4: Fine Motor and Scissor Skills
Chapter 5: Visual Perceptual and Scissor Skills
Chapter 6: Sensory Processing and Scissor Skills
Chapter 7: Attention Challenges and Scissor Skills
Chapter 8: Helping Kids who Struggle with Scissor Skills
Chapter 9: Creative Ways to Practice Scissor Skills with Kids
Resources for Typical and Adaptive Scissors, Cutting Materials, and Further Information
References

Get your copy of The Scissor Skills Book!

 

How to teach kids how to slow down and cut on the lines with modifications and accommodations for sensory, visual, fine motor, difficulties due to behavioral and attention problems.
 

Looking for more scissor activities? Try these scissor skills activities:


Use stickers to help with scissor skills



Scissor Skills Crash Course


Creative Scissor Skills Activities

Easy Scissor Skills Practice Idea

Scissor Skills Activities for Kids

Scissor Skills gift guide

Improving Scissor Skills with Play Dough

scissor-skills-kids











Resources: Zoltan, B. Vision, Perception, and Cognition: A Manual for the Evaluation and Treatment of the Neurologically Impaired Adult. Thorofare, New Jersey, Slack Inc.;1996.

 

The Scissor Skills Book for teaching kids to cut with scissors

 

Clay Fine Motor Strengthening Exercises

As an Occupational Therapist, I LOVE using clay with my kids in fine motor work.  Clay uses a resistance that works the small muscles of the hands and builds arch development on the hands, increasing endurance for activities like coloring and writing for longer periods of time.  Kids will often times complain of their hands being tired when they color.  They will press very lightly or switch colors overly-often, allowing themselves to sneak in breaks from coloring.  A strengthening activity like using clay is a great way to build the strength of the intrinsic muscles.


Manipulating a pencil with minute movements is essential for handwriting.  Clay is perfect for fine tuning pencil control in a fun way!


Clay fine motor activities to improve strength, scissor skills, and pencil grasp.

Hand Strengthening Exercises with Clay

We used clay to include in some finger strength exercises and grip strength exercises. Clay is such a great medium for hand strengthening activities because you can meet the needs of each individual.

Full Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.
 

There are many ways to work on hand strength with clay:

  • Pinch small pieces from a large piece of Clay (affiliate link)
    .
  • Pinch the clay between the thumb and pointer finger.
  • Roll the clay into a long snake.
  • Use a Plastic Clay Tool (affiliate link) to carve in the clay, pressing and drawing with the tools.
  • Poke the clay with the pointer finger to work on finger isolation.
  • Press small items like beads or rocks into the Clay (affiliate link)
    like we did with play dough.
  • Press alphabet stamps into clay like we did here.
  • Add water to make the clay softer or allow the clay to dry out for a more resistive texture.
READ MORE about Fine Motor Skills HERE.
 
Work on Scissor Skills with clay:
  • Roll a long “snake”. Use scissors to cut the clay into chunks.
  • Roll a long “snake” of Clay
    . Use a pencil to mark lines. Cut on the lines.
  • Roll a long “snake” of clay.  Use the side of a plastic knife to mark lines in the clay.  Cut on the lines.
  • Smash the clay into flat disk.  Use scissors to cut across the clay.  Then, mark lines with a pencil and plastic knife to cut along the lines.
READ MORE about Scissor Skills HERE.
 
Use Clay to work on Pencil Manipulation:
  • Create a flat disk with the clay.  Use a pencil to write in the clay.  Practice letter formation.
  • Roll the Clay
    into a “snake”.  Poke a pencil into the clay, encouraging a tripod grasp on the pencil.
  • Roll small balls of clay between the thumb and pointer finger and ring finger.
  • Create a thick “stick” with the clay.  Show your child how to rotate the clay and twirl it between the thumb and fingers.
  • Use Clay Cleaning Tool Set for utensil use while providing verbal cues for appropriate grasp. NOTE: Using utensils like these may not encourage tripod grasp due to the nature of the tools. They will improve intrinsic strength and open web space.
  • Press a pencil eraser into the clay.
  • Create a flat disk from the clay.  Place a piece of paper on top of the paper.  Practice writing on the paper, encouraging your child to write lightly enough to not poke the pencil point through the paper.  This is an exercise in proprioception for the hands.
READ MORE about Handwriting HERE.

Fine motor activities with clay
 
You will love these clay ideas:
 

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How will you practice fine motor skills with clay? Practicing pencil grasp, scissor skills, and hand strengthening?  Let us know!

 

Christmas Tree Scissor Skills Craft

Paper Christmas trees for scissor skills

If you need a preschool scissor skills activity, then this Christmas cutting craft is for you. Based on the beginning scissor skills of cutting through a page, the Christmas tree cutting activity helps young learners to hold scissors perpendicularly on the page while cutting through the paper (and not tearing the paper!) It’s a fun way to work on skills this time of year!

Christmas Tree Cutting Activity

 
This time of year, working on Occupational Therapy goals like scissor skills can be difficult for kids who are more excited than Santa’s elves. Sometimes, you have areas you need to work on even though the kids are more excited about all of the exciting sights that the Christmas season brings.  
 
That’s where this Christmas Tree Scissors activity comes into play!
 
Christmas Tree Scissor Skills craft can help kids work on cutting on lines and scissor control with a fun, holiday craft that will bring smiles from your little elves!
 
Check out these Christmas Fine Motor Activities for more creative ways to work on fine motor skills and address development of skills this Christmas season. 
 


Christmas Tree Scissor skills craft for kids this holiday season, perfect for preschool parties or play dates while working on Occupational Therapy goals like cutting on lines.
 
 


Christmas Tree Scissor Skills Craft for kids

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You might have seen this scissor skill craft on our OT Christmas calendar where we shared a month of Christmas-y Occupational Therapy activities.  In it, we shared occupational therapy activities that can be done this time of year to develop skills and help kids thrive. 
 
The idea actually was one we shared a few years ago with our icicle scissor skills craft. The basic premise is helping young scissor users to cut through the page to create a craft or an actual result.
 
When learners are first starting out with scissor use, they tend to push through the paper, resulting in torn paper and frustrated kids. This craft is a simple way to work on cutting through the page with engaged scissors, maintaining vertical positioning of the blades of the scissors in a perpendicular position compared to the paper. 
 
You can learn more about the progression of scissor skills and how to grade activities to support learners as they move to the next level of scissor use in our crash course on scissor skills. We used gift wrap to work on scissor skill progression, so it’s a great activity for the holiday season! 
 
An easy printable template of our icicle craft is available as well.
 
The same concept of cutting through the page (without tearing the paper) can be carried over and used in this Christmas cutting craft.
 
 
 
Christmas Tree Scissor skills craft for kids this holiday season, perfect for preschool parties or play dates while working on Occupational Therapy goals like cutting on lines.
 

How to make paper Christmas Trees

 
You’ll need just a couple of items to create these paper Christmas trees and work on scissor skills:
  • Green Paper
  • Brown Paper
  • Scissors
  • A Marker
 
To practice scissor skills with a festive, Christmas tree spin, use Green Cardstockto cut triangles.  
 
Cutting card stock provides a greater resistance than regular printer paper and is a great way for beginner scissor users to learn to cut on lines accurately, with precision.   
 
1. Draw long lines from one edge of the paper to the other so children can cut along one line without turning the page.  This craft can be modified for older children by drawing triangles on the page to allow the child to turn the page to cut around a sharp angle. 


2. Draw short lines on a strip of Brown Cardstock to practice snipping in one solid cut.  Holding a strip of paper with short cuts is perfect for beginner scissor users.

3. Next, have the child to glue the trunks onto the green triangles.



Christmas Tree Scissor skills craft for kids this holiday season, perfect for preschool parties or play dates while working on Occupational Therapy goals like cutting on lines.

 
Christmas Tree Scissor skills craft for kids this holiday season, perfect for preschool parties or play dates while working on Occupational Therapy goals like cutting on lines.
 
Love this idea? Share it on Facebook! 
 

Christmas Handwriting Activities

Writing out that Christmas wish list is a difficult task that brings out tears instead of holiday excitement.  I’ve got a solution for your kiddo with handwriting difficulties: a packet of modified paper for all of the Christmas handwriting tasks that come up each year.  Use this handwriting pack to help kids who struggle with handwriting to participate in holiday traditions while even working on and developing their handwriting skills!

Working on handwriting with kids this Christmas season? Grab your copy of the Christmas Modified Handwriting Packet. It’s got three types of adapted paper that kids can use to write letters to Santa, Thank You notes, holiday bucket lists and much more…all while working on handwriting skills in a motivating and fun way! Read more about the adapted Christmas Paper here

How to Use these Christmas Trees To Work on Scissor Skills

So, after you’ve shown a learner how to cut simple Christmas trees using the cut-through method that we’ve covered above, how can you use this activity to build on motivation as a meaningful task?

Having “buy-in” or a reason for completing an activity is part of the way to develop skills through meaningful and motivating activities. When we show the learner that we can use the Christmas trees that they’ve cut to create a card or craft that can be given to a loved one, we immediately get that buy-in so they want to put forth their best effort.

  1. Use the paper Christmas trees to create a homemade Christmas card that builds fine motor skills.

2. You can also use these Christmas Trees in a math activity. This activity strengthens the hands as well by using a hole punch to count. It’s a great activity to build on the scissor skills task.

3. Use the paper Christmas trees in decorations by clipping them with clothes pins or paper clips to string them across the room in a Christmas garland.  

Then, to further develop the hand strength needed to hold and cut across a page with scissors, work on the fine motor strength to strengthen hands that cut with scissors, try making this clothes pin Christmas tree.

There are many ways to develop fine motor skills through play and this scissor skills Christmas tree is just one of those activities for this time of year. Grab more creative activities in our post on Christmas fine motor activities.

Looking for done-for you therapy activities this holiday season?

This print-and-go Christmas Therapy Kit includes no-prep, fine motor, gross motor, self-regulation, visual perceptual activities…and much more… to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, Christmas-themed, motor activities so you can help children develop the skills they need.

This 100 page no-prep packet includes everything you need to guide fine motor skills in face-to-face AND virtual learning. You’ll find Christmas-themed activities for hand strength, pinch and grip, dexterity, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, endurance, finger isolation, and more. 

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.