Snip, snip – Physical Development activity

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Scissor skills are fundamental to many art and craft activities, and using scissors also helps to develop a child’s hand-eye co-ordination and muscular strength.

What to do:

Offer children a variety of cutting activities:

Cutting cards: using a marker pen, rule a margin about 3cm from the edge of a piece of card. Rule four or five lines perpendicular to the margin and show the children how to cut along the lines, stopping at the margin. Increase the challenge by drawing thin felt pen lines, wavy lines and zigzags or use this cutting activity sheet. The cards can be named and dated and kept as a record of the child’s developing cutting skills.
Sticker lines: put a row of round coloured stickers onto card and challenge the children to cut through the stickers. Start off with straight lines and progress to curves, waves, circles, zigzags and squares.
Mosaic pieces: show children how to prepare shapes for a mosaic by cutting across strips of coloured paper to create squares and rectangles.
Collage shapes: let the children cut out images and motifs from magazines to use in a collage. Show them how to snip a rough margin around the image before cutting it out (this is easier than trying to cut from the whole page).
Exploring different materials: once children are familiar with scissors, try cutting different materials – paper, card of different thicknesses, corrugated card, tissue paper, thin plastic, felt and other fabrics. Find out which materials can’t be cut with scissors (metals, glass, thick plastic, stone, etc.).