DEVELOPING SCISSOR SKILLS
One of the questions I am often asked at my preschool craft club is how to encourage children to use scissors. It is almost a rite of passage in the early years, isn’t it? However, it is important to remember that although some children may have the skills to use small scissors by three or four years of age, scissor skills are not fully developed until 6 years of age. Learning to use scissors can also make lots of parents and carers nervous but it is much better to let little ones try using them in a safe, prepared environment rather than them discovering them in a drawer and getting up to no good!
Firstly, why do kids need to learn how to use scissors?
Well, aside from the obvious fact that it will be very useful for them later in life, cutting gives young child independent movements of each finger so using scissors strengthens hand muscles. This will, in turn, also help with handwriting and fine motor skills. Similarly, bilateral coordination is addressed when holding scissors in one hand and paper in the other.
How can we encourage children to use scissors safely?
Try not to help them too much. By assisting them and holding the paper for them, we are actually not helping. Encourage your child to hold scissors with one hand and paper with the other. If they do need help to hold both, try to support their second hand (the one holding the paper) rather than doing it for them.
Remind your child to look where they are cutting.
Thumbs should be pointing towards the ceiling for accurate and effective cutting skills.
Spring-loaded scissors are not essential to use but can children to understand the motion of cutting.
Make sure your child is using the correct scissors for their handedness. Do observe which hand they complete fine motor tasks with e.g. picking up a bead. It’s so important for left-handed children to use the correct scissors.
A colour sorting game at Craft Club, using tweezers, helping to learn that squeezing movement for scissors.
What activities can we do to develop cutting skills?
Using kitchen tongs and tweezers are brilliant for practising that squeezing motion. You can buy children’s tweezers or make your own with lolly sticks, a pompom and an elastic band. It’s super simple! Pom poms are great for using with tweezers.
Make it fun and let the explore! It can be as simple as drawing some lines and wavy shapes on a page for them to cut or get creative. One of the most favourite activities as craft club was a washing up bowl with cooked spaghetti in (dyed blue just because!) and the children LOVED practising using the scissors to snip the spaghetti.
