5 Steps to Scissor Skills Mastery
Let's face it - amidst your ever-crowded lesson planner, teaching scissor skills can often take a back seat to those core reading, writing and maths lessons; but it's actually an incredibly important fine motor skill for young children to learn and practice. In this blog post, we'll be sharing with you 5 Steps to Scissor Skills Mastery to help your students chop and snip their way to scissor skills success!
Teaching Scissor Grip
We've all had those students who just can't quite seem to get the hang of holding a pair of scissors correctly. Whether they're pointing the blade towards themselves as they cut, or trying to fit all five fingers through one of the holes, it can be tricky to reverse bad habits once they've begun. Luckily, we've got your back with a catchy sea shanty song that explains step-by-step how to grip a pair of scissors. With a call-and-response section to get your kids chanting along and some safety advice thrown in for good measure (do we run with our scissors? Yo ho NO!), your students will be chopping and snipping their way across the mighty seas faster than you can say 'walk the plank'! Cub Club subscribers can check out the video here.
For a colourful display to help students remember the correct way to grip their scissors, download these Desk Strips and Wall Displays! Not a Cub Club subscriber? Grab them on TPT instead.
Step 1: Snipping
Now that your students know how to hold their scissors safely, how do you actually help them to improve their scissor skills? Well, the first step is snipping. Children as young as 3 can practice this skill with playdough, straws or strips of paper ensuring that the scissors move in a forward motion as they snip.
A super fun, crafty activity to help practice snipping is our Mosaic Art cut and paste activity. Multiple fine motor skills are at play here as they carefully snip coloured strips of paper and glue within the lines of the pirate-y images to create colourful displays for the classroom!
Not a Cub Club subscriber? Head to TPT to purchase this activity individually.
Step 2: Straight Lines
The next step is to practice cutting along straight lines, using the 'helper hand' to keep the paper steady. Cutting long strips of paper to make paper chains is a great activity, and using different paper and card of different thickness can make the activity easier or harder.
A number of our printable activities provide fun ways for students to practice cutting along straight lines! You could Give Pevan a Haircut, cut along the lines to find the treasure with Open, Shut Them, Yo Ho Ho, or double the fun with our skip counting practice Number Strip Puzzles. Check them out below.
Click to download if you're a Cub Club subscriber, or you can purchase Give Pevan a Haircut, Open, Shut Them, Yo Ho Ho or our Number Strip Puzzles on TPT.
Step 3: Curved Lines
The 'helper hand' becomes extra-important here as it turns the paper simultaneously while the dominant hand cuts along the curved line. Gentle, wide curves are great to start with, and as students practice this skill, encourage them to keep their scissors moving in a continuous motion with the helper hand continuously moving, rather than snipping off bits of the paper and restarting regularly.
Our Pirate Spirals are a super-fun, artsy way of practicing cutting on curved lines. The spiral lines are thick and bold enough for students to follow easily, and they make for a fabulous classroom decoration once assembled.
Purchase Pirate Spirals on TPT if you're not a Cub Club subscriber.
Step 4: Simple Shapes
Starting with circles, squares and triangles and progressing to more complex shapes, this is the next step in mastering scissor skills. Rather than having the helper hand move in one continuous motion as with cutting spirals, now it has to move purposefully, at specific angles, while the scissors continue to cut forwards. This will, of course, require careful modelling from an adult and lots of practice!
Kids love puzzles, so why not combine a fun shape recognition game with some cutting practice? Our Pirate Picture Puzzles do just that. We also have a Cut and Paste activity with more simple shapes if that's where your kids are at. Or combine your Literacy lesson with some scissor practice with our Letter Match and Sentence Jumble printables.
Grab these activities on TPT:
Step 5: Complex Lines & Shapes
At this stage, students have the directional control to follow assorted lines accurately. Practice cutting along zig zags and around complex shapes with lots of changes in direction. Importantly, this is when students can start to tackle the challenging task of internal cutouts.
Our Fold and Cut craft activity includes a huge range of shapes at various levels of cutting difficulty. Students use fine motor skills to carefully fold along the dotted line and then cut around the shape. When they unfold the paper, it reveals a completed shape! Some of these shapes have internal lines to cut out too, which is super-exciting when students unfold to find a smiley face on a crab or a skull and cross bones on a pirate hat!
Grab our Fold & Cut resource on TPT!
A few tips…
If you've got kids who are still struggling to master their scissor skills, here's a few things to keep in mind:
💜 Fine motor skills, bilateral coordination and muscle strength are key elements in developing a strong scissor grip. Get your kids playing with playdough, using pegs, squeezing spray bottles, rolling a rolling pin, lacing beads and other activities that require hand/eye coordination and the ‘grasp/release’ motion. Or why not check out our Squishy Stuff and Finger Gym video series for some fun fine motor practice?
🧡 Make sure your lefties have left-handed scissors! This is often overlooked, but it's so important that left-handed students use scissors that have a reversed blade - they work better with their natural cutting motion and allow the student to see the line they are cutting more clearly. Speaking of lefties, our Scissor Skills printables have options for both RH and LH kids where necessary.
💜 Loop scissors and spring-loaded scissors are great for students who require a bit of extra support with hand strength and coordination.
Check out the links below for more information and resources:
- Scissor Cutting Skills by OT Mom Learning Activities
- Scissor Skills by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
- Cutting Skills by Building Blocks Therapy
We hope these tips were helpful and give you some fresh new ideas for practicing scissor skills in your classroom! Did we miss anything? What fine motor skills resources would you like to see in Cub Club next? Get in touch via our Contact page to share your ideas!
Not a Cub Club subscriber yet? You can purchase our full range of Scissor Skills resources over on TPT instead!
You can also try all of Cub Club with a 7 day free trial. With over 400 educational videos and related printables for every area of the curriculum, you'll never be short of fun, engaging activities to boost your students' fine motor skills!