SCISSOR SKILL – VARIOUS STAGES
Initially when Chintu reaches out for the scissors, my heart skips a beat and I really hope that he doesn’t have an accident. Now I don’t get to fear, he has some good fine motor control (Magic of all the fine motor activities we did).
You can introduce scissors to a child at the age of 1.5 years. First they will try to figure out how to hold it, then the open and close motion which will take time. This opening and closing motion with scissors helps in the development of small muscles in hands.
Start with playdough/noodles (cooked/coloured noodles), then move on to straws – once the child is confident with the scissors – let the child use paper.
Now that my boy has learnt how to use the scissors – he has analysed the working of the scissors, I thought its the right time to move to the next stage.
I cut paper into strips and drew some simple straight lines on it (refer the image). Drew lines in a way that gets Chintu to snip completely through the paper.
Why not long paper/full paper ? Why not longer lines ? full paper will be tricky for a toddler to handle, when thin strips are given the child can hold the paper on one hand (the child gets to easily understand where to hold the paper) and cut with the other. And longer lines are the upcoming stages – straight longer lines, diagonals and curves on small strips first and then longer ones and so on.
Don’t rush your kids through the different stages of scissors, because it’s important for them to have appropriate coordination with the scissors and understand safety when comes to using it.
The best thing about scissor skills is that it the level of difficulty can be adjusted according to the child.
