Scissor Skills: How And When To Introduce Scissors

It is never too early to start scissor skills. Kids love cutting and pasting, so why not let them? It is soooo good for them in the fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination department.

I started all three of my older children with the continuous loop scissors (called squizzers) at age 3 or earlier if they were eager. We started cutting strips of construction paper and then by taking last month’s calendar and cutting it. I purchased Little Kids Can… Cut and gave my kids one for each week/theme we studied. It worked great! This workbook is reproducible (you are allowed to copy it…) and starts with very thick straight lines, then zig zag and curvy lines and slowly progresses to shapes and eventually cut and glue projects.

If you are using a theme based curriculum, many of the themes are covered in this book. The Little Kids Can Color book also has great thick lined shapes perfect for cutting, coloring and pasting on construction paper. It rounds out the other book nicely. When they want to and are ready for the muscle strength to switch to kids scissors, they are allowed. Both types of scissors are in our bin.

I have always allowed my little ones access to construction paper and scissors whenever they want it (as long as I can supervise, since both have managed to cut their hair with kids scissors in unsupervised moments…); and encouraged their creativity with praise. All three of my older children, ( age 3.5, 6. and 8 ) children are very good with scissors and I often get questioned at church, coop, and anywhere they are cutting and pasting in public. “Wow, they cut so well, how did they learn that?”

Another thing is, before little ones have the strength for squizzers, which are very easy but not for two year olds… they can tear construction paper and this builds hand strength!