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scissor skills

Recycled Seedling Planter Animals Craft

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It’s no secret that we love to create crafts and activities using recycled materials.  Especially during April and right before Earth Day, we wanted to make a recycled material craft.  We pulled out recycled seedling planter containers to create animal crafts.



I always have left over seedling planter containers in the garage from gardening and flower planting.  If you garden, then you know that a pack of flowers or plants usually comes in a seedling container or 4-6 plants.  Once you plant your seedlings, you are left with a plastic container.  You can either toss it into the recycle bin, or save it for another project…like our cute animal crafts!

recycled seedling planter animal craft puppets



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Recycled Seedling Planter Containers crafts

Use recycled seedling containers to make puppets!
To make your seedling animal crafts, you’ll need a few materials:
Seedling Starter Trays that you’ve saved from planting

glue
assorted cardstock
extras like googly eyes, yarn, ribbon (use left over scraps!)

Cut the seedling planters into one sections.  Our planters were black so we decided to create black animal crafts.  Seedling sections became penguins, black cats, and even an orca whale.

Cutest animal puppets made from recycled seedling planters

We also made a spider, skunk, and panda.

Black cat puppet craft made from recycled seedling containers!
So many cute animals!  A black cat…
Panda puppet craft made from recycled seedling containers!

 We made a panda…
Skunk puppet craft made from recycled seedling containers!
…and a skunk.
Spider puppet craft made from recycled seedling containers!
A spider…
Penguin puppet craft made from recycled seedling containers!
Penguin…

Orca (Killer Whale) puppet craft made from recycled seedling containers!
And the cutest orca (Killer Whale) craft!

Our seedling planter animals turned into cute puppets for all sorts of imagination and pretend play scenes.  We added these to a sensory bin for a small world activity, too.

Recycled seedling container animal puppets craft
Recycled seedling container animal puppets craft

This post is part of the 60 day junk play challenge on Best Toys 4 Toddlers.


Looking for more recycled crafts? Try these: 
Spring chick juice box cover~ tip to tip grasp, multi-textural craft for Spring

Rainbow recycled cardboard tube craft~ fine motor skills, imagination, pretend play, language skills

Rainbow binoculars~ imagination, pretend play, fine motor skills

Cardboard tube turkey napkin ring~ fine motor work 


Fine motor color sorting activity with recycled grated cheese container~ tripod grasp, color, pattern, and sorting learning skills. This is a great early math activity!

In-hand manipulation activities ~uses a grated cheese container and a recycled two liter drink container to develop in-hand manipulation and translation skills.

Flower Scissor Skills Craft

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Spring is around the corner, and flower crafts are the sign that real flowers are about to pop up everywhere!  We made this flower craft using cupcake liners while practicing scissor skills one afternoon.  It’s an easy and quick craft that will brighten any room!


Make a spring flower craft and practice scissor skills with kids using cupcake liners.


Spring Flower Craft

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To make our flowers, we used a few materials:
these cupcake liners (I love the bright colors!)
glue 
and our favorite scissors (These are the best and the ones that I always recommended to my school-aged OT students.)

Scissor Practice Craft for Kids

Start by cutting the center circle from the cupcake liners.  Cutting a material like cupcake liners is more difficult than regular paper due to the thinner material and the texture of the liner.  Kids will have to concentrate on cutting the center “line” which is really a fold.  This is great line awareness work and a great way to work on visual motor skills. 

Have your child snip other cupcake liners in to the center of the circle, but stopping at the fold.  These liners will become the petals of the flowers and the sun’s rays.  Cutting and stopping at a point requires hand-eye coordination and dexterity in scissor use.  They have to be sure to open/shut the scissors effectively to stop at a certain point.

Are you looking for more ways to build and develop scissor skills?  Here are some of our most popular ideas.  You can always explore the Scissor Skills tab at the top of the blog, too. You’ll find it under the Occupational Therapy drop down list. 

Scissor Skills Crafts for Kids:

Sunflower Cupcake Liner Craft


Creative Scissor Skills Activities for Kids


Scissor Skills Crash Course

Cupcake liner flower craft
Glue the petals onto paper and arrange the center circles on top of the outer cupcake liner.  Add the sun and green stems.  

Let us know if you make this craft. We would love to see your Spring art!

More Flower Crafts for Kids:



Recycled artwork spring flower craft | feather flower craft

Easy Scissor Practice

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Working on scissor skills can be tough for some kids!  There’s a lot that goes into cutting a shape from a piece of paper.  The grasping of the scissors, opening and closing the loops, holding and manipulating the paper, keeping the scissors on the line, maintaining endurance to keep on snipping…it can be a difficult task for little ones with hand weakness or difficulty with any of these parts of the scissor task.  
 
Cutting streamers is an inexpensive way to teach kids to snip paper.
 

 

 
Try these bilateral coordination activities to work on efficient use of the hands together in scissor activities.
 
This scissor practice activity is great for kids who are just starting out with scissor use or kids who need a little practice with managing scissors.
 
In-hand manipulation activities are a great way to boost fine motor skills needed for tasks like managing clothing fasteners, using a pencil when writing, manipulating items like coins or beads, and more. 
 
Practice scissor skills with a roll of crepe paper for an easy scissor activity.

 

Easy way to practice cutting with scissors:

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We started this easy activity with just a few items.  A roll of  crepe paper streamer 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.  
 
Kids will love this easy scissor skills practice activity using crepe paper streamers!

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! 

Kids will love this easy scissor skills practice activity using crepe paper streamers!

 

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:

Fire Truck Craft Easy Shapes

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This fire truck craft was a given after we made our easy shapes school bus craft.  We love looking for trucks when we are out and about (what Toddler or Preschooler doesn’t??)  This fire truck craft was easy to do and perfect for little fingers to build.  We love the puzzle-like craftiness of this truck idea.  Fire safety week would be a great time to make this craft…but if you’ve got kids like mine, it’s fun any time of year!


Easy shapes fire truck craft. This is fun for toddlers and preschoolers during fire safety week.

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Items needed to make a fire truck craft:



cardstock in red, yellow, and white
scissors We love our fiscars for kid use!
Glue


We started with basic shapes to make our fire truck: large rectangle, square, 3 black circles (trace a bottle cap), three smaller white circles, white square, 8-10 black squares, long white rectangle for the ladder.  

Older children can work on cutting these shapes.  Cutting from card stock is a great way to work on scissor skills, as it’s a bit more sturdy than printer paper or construction paper.  The increased resistance provides more input when making snips with scissors. 

For the Toddlers and preschoolers, be sure to work on shape identification.  Point out the different shapes, the way that we know what they are (circles are one line and curve all around; rectangles have two long lines and two short lines with four corners).

These little fingers couldn’t wait to get started!


We started building our fire truck.

Fire truck craft for Preschool and Toddlers
Count the squares as you build the fire truck ladder. 

I cut a swirly curved shape for a fire hose.  Our fire truck turned out looking pretty cute and a great way to start talking about fire safety during Fire Safety Month in October.  Happy crafting!


Love this craft?  Check out our easy shapes bus craft.

You may also be interested in joining our kids crafts pinterest board for easy and cute crafts for the kids.

Sunflower Cupcake Liner Craft

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Sunflowers are such a fun flower.  This time of year, you can see giant sunflowers standing tall all over the neighborhood.  We made a super cute sunflower with cupcake liners and sunflower seeds.
Not only is this craft easy, it’s a great way to practice a little fine motor skills, too!


Use a cupcake liner to create a fall craft for kids.

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To make a Sunflower Cupcake Liner Craft, you will need:

solid yellow cupcake liners

sunflower seeds (Rinse the salt from the seeds and dry on a towel)

glue

scissors

We used two cupcake liners for a brighter color. This is a great way to teach kids to snip paper. 
Start by snipping little wedges from the edge of the cupcake liners.  This is a great scissor activity for school aged kids.  The material of cupcake liners is thinner than regular paper and requires more precision when snipping.  The cupcake liner is small and a great way to practice scissor accuracy and bilateral hand coordination.

Add glue to the center of the cupcake liner.  Baby Girl though we needed A LOT of glue.  And A LOT of sunflower seeds on our flower.  It turned out looking pretty cute with a bunch of seeds.

More glue.  She is a big fan of glue.

Fine Motor Fall Craft

Place the sunflower seeds into the glue.  Manipulating the small seeds is a great way to practice tip to tip grasp and dexterity.  If more fine motor skill is needed, encourage your child to pick up a handful of seeds.  “Squirrel away” the seeds in the palm of the hand and place the seeds into the glue one at a time.  Using the index finger and thumb to transfer the seed from the palm of the hand to the tips of the fingers and into the glue is in-hand manipulation.  This is a vital skill needed for tasks such as manipulating coins, tying shoes, and managing small objects.
We glued our sunflower onto bright orange paper and gave this to Baby Girl’s Great Grand Pappy.  Let us know if you make a sunflower craft like this.  We love to see your projects on our Facebook page.

Looking for more easy crafts?  Stop by and follow along on our Kids Crafts Pinterest board.

Easy Shapes School Bus Craft

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An easy school bus craft is just what kids need before back to school, along with a little crafting fun!


I don’t want to even think about the end of summer and the start of school.  The summer fun is quickly passing by with long days of outdoor play and water activities.   We’ve got a few of the cousins heading back to school this fall.  A couple on the school bus and a few that will be starting up preschool for the first time.  New classes, new book bags, and new school shoes happen before the summer fun has even ended.  With all of the newness happening, this mama wanted to touch on an old familiar theme with the start of school quickly approaching.  


This school bus craft was a fun way to create while we explored easy shapes.  This was a great craft for my two year old as we talked about the start of school and some easy shapes.


Kids will love to make this school bus craft as a back to school craft that helps kids learn shapes.

Back to School Craft

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Easy shapes school bus craft

School Bus Craft

We started with a few sheets of yellow construction paper,
black construction paper,
and white printer paper.  I cut a few simple shapes from the paper.  An older child who is working on scissor skills could cut these shapes.
Building our school bus was fun!  We moved our shapes around until we liked the bus.  This was fun for Big Sister (age 6) as she helped us build the bus and made sure the windows were where she liked them. 
Baby Girl (age 2 and half) worked on her shape identification with this craft.  Big Sister and I would hold up a shape and ask her what it was.  She was loving the shape test!

We glued the shapes in place on our bus when we got it looking like we wanted.  Big Sister used some scrap paper to draw bus stops for our bus.  I love the “baby stop”!

school bus craft for learning shapes and preparing for back to school


School bus craft and book is great for back to school prep for young kids.

Head to the library and pick up a few of our favorite school bus books to go along with this fun craft:

Circus Tent Craft

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We’ve been on a little Circus theme around here lately.  You might have seen our roundup of favorite circus books or our ideas for a circus party.  This circus craft was easy to put together and the kids loved it.  They were itching for a painting craft and this one hit the mark. 


Circus tent craft for kids

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Circus Craft Idea for a Circus Theme:

Start with a few supplies:
paint brush
orange paper
black marker
Glue

To begin your circus tents, cut the coffee filters as shown.  This is a great way for little scissor users to practice their scissor skills.  Cutting coffee filters is more difficult than regular paper and a great way to practice accuracy as they cut along the folded parts of the coffee filter.  Adults can make marks on the coffee filter where needed for the kiddos to cut along. 

Once cut, start the painting!  We painted our circus tents with red paint on every other folded section of the coffee filters.  Use your imagination on your circus tents.  Circus tents come in many different colors and designs!
Once the paint is dry, place the smaller section of coffee filter under the larger piece.  Glue onto a sheet of paper.  Cut a small slit on the smaller section, and fold the doors of the circus tent open.  The circus is open! 
Use the black marker to make flag poles and glue small triangles of orange (or any color) paper to make flags.  Done!  This would be a great craft to do before an outing to the circus or just for fun when you read a few circus books. 
You may also enjoy our Kids’ Crafts Pinterest Board. Stop by and follow along:

Color Sorting Scissor Activity

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If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know how much we love to do fine motor activities.  Scissor activities for kids is one of our favorite fine motor topics and we’ve got a bunch of creative ways to practice them!  This fun fine motor color sorting activity was part of prep for another activity we were doing (watch this space to see these foam squares again!), but we had so much fun with it, that we had to share! 

 

Scissor Skills Activity for Kids

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We started with the wooden crates from our Melissa & Doug Food Groups.  Besides being a totoally fun pretend play toy, the packaging is completely re-usable and perfect for sorting activities.  We shared the picture of our four crates on Instagram and had some great comments about how awesome these crates are for all kinds of play.

I lined the bottom of the four crates with different colors of foam sheets, and drew thick lines on matching colors of foam sheets.

This was a great way for Little Guy to practice his cutting with scissors.  The thickness of the foam sheets is great for new scissor users because it provides greater resistance and therefore slows the scissors more than regular paper.  The thickness of the lines is another way to grade down the cutting task for new scissor users. 

Slower cutting speed is good when the little one needs verbal and physical prompts to hold the scissors correctly, and how to position their assisting hand on the foam. 

Little Guy is working on his scissor skills and needs prompts to hold the foam/paper close to his body and to move the scissors when he’s cutting, and not hos whole upper body.  Strait lines are a good start for him for practice.  Older kids or those who are doing a little better with their scissor skills would benefit from thinner lines, curved lines, or even using construction paper instead of the foam sheets.

Once we had all of the foam squares cut out, we were ready for our sorting.  This interested Little Guy for a little while, but Baby Girl was the one who was really into this part of the activity.

She was able to sort the colors into the correct bin.  We worked on naming the colors along the way.

Sorting the squares was a fun way to play and learn!

We had a great time with this cutting and sorting activity.  Let us know if you do this at home, we would love to hear about it!

Looking for more scissor activities?  You may like some of these:

Scissor Skills with Play Dough | Cutting foam beads activity | Using stickers to help with scissor use

Stop by our Scissor Skills Pinterest board for more ideas. 

Follow Sugar Aunts’s board Scissor skills on Pinterest.

Recycled Artwork Spring Flower Craft

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We do LOADS and loads of kid’s crafts around here.  So what do you do with all of those paintings and artwork and beautiful one-of-a-kind pictures?  You save some, give some to family, and the stacks of the rest…you can’t save it all!
Why not recycle the artwork into more fun crafts?  This Spring Flower craft uses some of those special paintings in recycled art!


Use recycled art projects to create a flower craft.

Recycled Artwork Spring Flower Craft

Baby Girl is big time into painting.  She could paint every day and be more than happy.  (And she does.  And she is.) 
We’ve got lots of paintings ready to be used for recycled art.  This Spring flower used a finger painting she made.
Spring flower craft using recycled art materials.
We started with her blue finger painting and cut it up into strips.  This would be a great scissor activity for young scissor users.  Cutting strait lines is a great way to develop accuracy with cutting lines and self-confidence with the scissors.  Draw strait lines on the backside of the painting and let your little one start snipping!  Line accuracy doesn’t matter, this flower will look great however strait (or not strait) the strips of painting.
We used a yellow egg carton section from our painted rainbow egg cartons. 
Tape strips of recycled art projects into an egg carton to create a spring flower craft.

Tape or glue the strips to the inside of the egg carton section.

Preschoolers and toddlers love to see their old art projects come to new light in a spring flower craft.

Add glue to the edge of the egg carton.  Press it onto a sheet of construction paper.  Add a little curve to the petals by rolling up the ends of the painting strips just a little.

display chidlrens' artwork along a string.
We added green strips of construction paper for a stem and leaves for our flower craft.  Hang it up and enjoy the artwork for a second time around!
Looking for more flower crafts?  These are some of our favorites:
Spring Nature Hunt Collage Flowers

Spring Time Egg Carton Tulip Craft
Earth Day Recycle Bin Flower Craft

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