In part one of “Scissor Skills”, I explained the importance of teaching scissors when your child was ready, ideally with close supervision, checking which hand they seemed to have a hand preference/dominance with and to have the correct scissors, use simple words to remind them to “open & close” the blades as they snip paper straws and strips of cereal boxes etc. As well as keeping their thumb up in the scissor loops as this helps to angle the blades correctly – there is a lot to remember when first learning to use scissors! (read part one for more details).
Below are some “Next Steps”, but all children develop at different stages, so go at your child’s pace.
As your child is learning to cut more and maybe supporting the paper with their helping hand (non-scissor hand), encourage them to support it with their thumb up – this means their thumb is showing on the top of the paper and their other four fingers are under the paper. This makes supporting paper much easier. When first learning most children lay the paper on the table as they don’t know how to support it correctly, which can make it difficult to snip with the scissors.
- Using sugar paper or slightly more thicker paper will be easier to support when first learning to use scissors.
- Cutting and snipping lots of different materials helps strengthen fingers and can be fun. Which will help with handwriting and other fine motor skills!
- Slowly introduce a wide thick line to cut inside of, slowly reduce the thickness of the line as your child’s scissor skills develop.
- Introduce a slow curve or angle, slowly turning it into a semi-circle or v shape, then a circle and square.
- Remember to move your helping hand as you cut. Never have your helping hand in front of the scissor blades.
- Top Tip: left handed people cut in an anti-clockwise direction and right handed people cut clockwise.
Most (not all) children really enjoy learning how to use scissors, so when I use to do therapy sessions in the NHS (as my role as an Occupational Therapist). I would use pictures or images from “google image” to show 3 or 4 things we were going to work on during the session, so they knew what was expected, and scissor practice was always the last task as it was such a good motivator.