Every preschooler’s developmental toolkit should include scissor skills. Cutting with scissors is a big part of early childhood education. Children learn to hold scissors correctly and practice cutting for successful skill progression. Mastering cutting skills improves a child’s confidence and performance.

Cutting is a complex skill that takes several years to develop. If a preschooler has specific challenges that make it difficult to coordinate scissor movements, the child might require additional support to achieve success. Before children demonstrate proficient scissor skills, they need to have plenty of opportunities to use their hands and fingers. 

This article is a follow-up to “Prioritize Cutting with Scissors for Preschoolers.” For a thorough understanding of scissor skills development, please read both articles.

Pre-cutting skills mainly focus on the opening and closing of the hand, finger isolation abilities, hand strengthening, and two-handed tasks. 

Pre-cutting Activities 

• Ripping paper: using both hands, pinching paper with fingers, and tearing paper.
• Crumple big pieces of paper with both hands and crinkle smaller pieces with your fingers.
• Squeezing sponges, bath toys, textured fidget balls, clothespins, squirt toys, glue, and spray bottles.
• Picking up small objects with thumb, index, and middle fingers (i.e., coins, pegs, marbles, and beads).
• Picking up small objects with tongs, tweezers, scoopers, and strawberry hullers.
• Use hole puncher paper to lace the string towards a specific spot.
• Creating art with an eyedropper and turkey baster.
• Fingerplays and songs, hand and finger puppets. 
• Playing with resistive manipulatives and textures requires finger pressure control, such as block play, putty, play dough, clay, and rubber bands.

Throughout early childhood education, children continue to participate in many fine-motor activities. However, children require proficiency in various foundational skills to have a strong foundation for scissor readiness.  

Picking the Right Types of Scissors 

How do we choose the right scissors for our child? There are many different types of scissors. Children need small scissors that are easy for little hands to grasp and manipulate. In addition, assessing a child’s hand proficiency is important to determine.  Whether the child is right or left-handed, to do so, watch your child work on fine motor tasks.

Commonly Used Child Scissors

Safety Scissors / Training Scissors

Successful scissor skill development starts with safety scissors. Safety training scissors have rounded tips and blunt blades. These types of scissors cut paper only and will not cut skin, hair, or clothing. The training scissors have plastic blades or might have dull metal applied. The bottom loop has more space for comfortable finger placement and control, and some scissors offer single-finger loops. This pair is the right choice for beginners.

Safety Scissors with Training Lever

This option offers the same features as the safety scissors, with an additional training lever that opens the blade after each use. It helps children open and close scissors. The training lever can be disabled for standard scissor use. This pair is an excellent choice for novices. 

Small Preschool Stainless Steel Scissors

Stainless steel scissors have rounded tips. They are sharp and offer improved cutting performance for various art media. Some scissors offer ergonomic designs, such as a non-slip textured soft grip on the finger loops. For safety, children need supervision when cutting with stainless steel scissors, especially during the critical transition from safety scissors. These scissors are ideal for older preschoolers, generally ages four and up. We want to make sure we consider left-handed scissors for our dominant left-hand students.  

Preschool Stainless Steel Scissors with Training Lever

Stainless steel scissors with training levers, also known as Koopy Spring Scissors, offer the same features as the small stainless scissors but with additional self-opening springs to assist the cutting performance. The spring can be disabled for standard scissor use with an easy flip. This pair of scissors is the 2-in-1 deal, standard and self-opening, for ages four years and up.

Easy-Grip Scissors

Easy-grip scissors are adaptive scissors with easy hand placement and easy squeeze. There are no loops for correcting finger placement. Loop scissors are excellent for students with hand weakness and fine-motor coordination challenges. These scissors also open automatically after each cut for improved control. Loop scissors come in small sizes for preschoolers and regular sizes for older children. Also, left-handed loop scissors are available for older kids.

Be forewarned, these scissors are sharp. Adult supervision is required. Loop scissors are perfect for children who struggle with cutting or need more time to learn to cut.  

A long list of adapted scissors is designed for children with specific needs. An occupational therapist prescribes individual recommendations of specialized scissors. 

Supplying the right type of scissors will determine engagement, participation, and success in cutting activities. As an occupational therapist who worked with a significant number of children, I would recommend having a variety of different pairs of scissors available in the classroom and at home. Starting with the safety scissors and progressing to stainless steel as children become comfortable and demonstrate improved scissor manipulation.  

Scissor Safety Rules 

We need to educate our little ones on scissors safety rules. Furthermore, we must continually remember and review our rules for cutting with scissors. 

• Scissors are sharp. 
• We need to be cautious and responsible when using scissors.
• Scissors are tools, not toys.
• No running with scissors. We use scissors at the table.
• Adult supervision is required when using scissors.

Correct Scissor Positioning

Equally important is educating and demonstrating proper scissor positioning for young children. 

• Talk about cutting hand and helper hand
  • Cutting hand is for holding and cutting with scissors
  • Helper hand is for holding and turning paper (for shape cutting) 
• Cutting hand
  • Tuck your elbow to the side
  • Keep your thumb on top / thumb-up position
  • The index and middle fingers go in a large loop
  • If the scissor loops are the same size, the middle finger goes in the bottom loop, and the pointer finger is outside next to the bottom loop.
  • Cut forward / cut away from the body
• Helping hand
  • Hold the paper with your thumb on top
  • Initially, children might need help with paper and will hold the paper with a thumb down position.

Choosing Cutting Materials

Beginning Stage for Scissor Use

Children enjoy snipping small pieces of paper in the beginning stages of cutting. For this activity, short strips or small pieces of paper are ideal. In addition, thicker paper is more manageable for young children to hold and snip. Good choices include construction paper, stock paper, and old birthday cards. Additionally, creative and straightforward textures are fun for youngsters to use when experimenting with snipping. For example, play-dough, straws, cooked spaghetti, slime, shredded paper, nature items, and more.

Intermediate Stage for Scissor Use

Children learn to cut on short, thick lines at the intermediate stages of cutting. Then, they advance to cutting along long lines across the paper. Preschoolers enjoy building proficiency in cutting skills. Working with paper and a variety of art media. Media include textured paper, regular paper, thin paper, strings, tape, ribbons, and more. Children manage full-sized pieces of paper.

Advanced Stage for Scissor Use

At the advanced stages of cutting, children can skillfully cut basic shapes out of regular paper. Older preschoolers and kindergartners primarily advance their cutting skills working with paper. Indeed, they continue to enjoy working with an assortment of art materials. However, the precision and coordination to cut out shapes accurately mostly involve paper.  

Summary

In short, cutting with scissors is a complex fine motor skill. It involves the small muscle movements of the hands and fingers in coordination with the eyes. Unfortunately, scissor skills are often overlooked, and young children struggle with the ability to cut effectively. Preschool children require a multitude of fun scissor practice to strengthen hand muscles and coordination for later skills, such as writing, typing, sports, and instrument play, to name a few. 

Thus, when teaching skills to preschoolers, we need to focus on the following:

• Providing opportunities for pre-cutting skills practice.
• Picking the right type of scissors.
• Scissor safety education.
• Correct scissor positioning.
• Providing appropriate materials with just the right cutting challenges.

“Two fingers on the bottom and the thumb on top, open the mouth and go chop, chop, chop.”

If you enjoyed this article, please share it with a friend!

Prioritize Cutting with Scissors for Preschoolers

10 Easy Activities to Improve Hand Strength in Children

Fun Animal Walk Exercises for Children

*Kids Groove and Grow is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, as an affiliate advertising program designated to provide means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.