Check out this awesome preschool cutting practice idea – great for occupational therapy or to try in the classroom!
If you’re looking for a fun and simple way to target grasping skills, scissor skills, hand eye coordination, bilateral coordination and more…this is the activity for you! This one is perfect to pair with other fun themed ideas like these fun gingerbread games for kindergarten or other cookie/gingerbread themed activities.
You’ll only need a few simple supplies that you probably already have on hand! First, let’s talk a little bit about cutting practice for preschool.
Preschool Cutting Practice
By about 3 years old, kids should be able to hold scissors and paper with two hands, snipping the paper and even starting to cut on short lines with fair accuracy. There are tons of fun ways to practice snipping with scissors (including today’s sprinkle cleanup activity)!
We love giving a purpose to kids’ snipping to make it more interesting. Instead of cutting on plain black lines drawn on a piece of paper, can you make it more colorful and fun? Can they snip green paper to create blades of grass and then draw bugs to hide underneath? Can they snip around a piece of yellow paper to create a lion’s mane?
Beginner Cutting Pack
We have these activities (and many more) available in our Beginner Cutting Pack!
This is the simplest way to have ready-made preschool cutting practice pages at your fingertips that will spice up your occupational therapy sessions or your classroom cutting practice station.
The pages include tons of fun and creative cutting practice ideas that give a purpose to kids’ cutting so that they feel a sense of ownership and connection to what they’re doing.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!
What You’ll Need:
-Plastic straws
-Scissors
-Empty sprinkle or spice container with holes large enough for the straws
How to Play With This Preschool Cutting Practice Activity
Check out the video of this fun preschool cutting practice game in action!
Have kids cut several straws into small pieces. This is the fun part because they bounce all over the place! Snipping straws is a great way for kids to practice the bilateral coordination they need for cutting with scissors.
Have kids open the empty sprinkles or spice container and pick up the “sprinkles” from the table and floor, putting them into the holes of the container.
This is an amazing fine motor and bilateral coordination activity and a great thing to add to your toolkit of cutting activities for preschoolers because kids will have to use two hands together to cut the straws and to stabilize the container while they’re putting the sprinkles inside!
Looking for more Cutting Practice Ideas?
Check out these fun activities to help kids practice the skills they need for cutting with scissors:
DIY Cutting Practice Box
This cutting practice box is perfect for classroom centers, occupational therapy sessions, or fine motor time at home!
Cutting Mazes Scissor Skill Worksheets [FREE PRINTABLE!]
Check out these fun, colorful cutting mazes that kids can use to practice cutting on lines and cutting out shapes!
Creative Cutting Practice
Cutting with scissors is harder than it looks! We like to break things down into smaller parts, working on the prerequisite skills first and gradually building up until kids can put them all together. Here are some of our favorite ways to extend these skills and work up to cutting with scissors!
Teaching Scissor Skills
Here, you’ll find all of our top tips and tricks for teaching kids how to use scissors!
