Dear Reader,
My daughter has really been struggling with scissor skills. It fits right in with all the fine motor stuff she’s been working on in OT. The fact is that if given the choice between big movements and small, this girly will choose big. And it goes further than movements. I’ve got an active, grand-movement-only type child. Nothing should be small in her mind. So slowing down and working on stuff she has to concentrate on is a major task for her. That’s why I looked up a list of scissor skills and made up scissor-cutting worksheets, and I’m working on a series of activities to use them.
From my fairly thorough internet research, scissor skills development includes:
- snipping at the paper (cutting off small chunks)
- cutting fringe (think the bottom of take a number papers. Or this activity)
- cutting straight lines all the way through a paper
- cutting zigzag lines all the way through a paper
- cutting out shapes and objects
- cutting out wavy lines
Please don’t count me an expert. An internet search doesn’t equal an OT degree. But I at least know we can work on those skills! So, I got to work creating the pages, and then we worked on making crafts with them. Today’s craft, as seen above, is a lion face. I made one with my daughter (you can see the difference in the skill level… at least I hope, haha), gave here a Styrofoam plate and a dry erase marker (I am sure it works just as well – if not better with a paper plate and washable markers, but we went with what we had) and showed her my example and she drew her own lion face. As mentioned above, she’s not big on small movements, so coloring is not her favorite thing. I think coloring on a different object than paper, and with a different medium, made it entertaining enough, but there is definitely a strong scribble game going on. And then, on to the part she wanted to do: Cutting the fringe mane.
After I cut the strips and she cut the fringe, I showed her how to curl the fringe. She had no patience for it, so we kinda did a few and then left it. Then, on to gluing. I found it easiest to glue the strips myself with liquid glue so that they got a little soggy and pliable before I handed them to her and had her put them around the plate. you need to curve/fold/bend them. obviously, because you’re working with a square paper and wrapping it around a round plate. Praise getting it on the plate because it’s harder than it sounds for preschoolers. Honestly, it was a challenge for me as an adult, so of course it’d be hard for preschoolers.
As far as skills, I’m pretty impressed. I mean I know it’s not “hey look at my super talented kid and what she can do.” but it was fun. And real. And she did pretty well for her relatively first craft. And I’m gonna do other similar projects because we need more scissor practice.
