Cutting and Tracing Practice

Parents,

I have been noticing that some students need some help with fine motor skills.

Your child might have had trouble with cutting things out in a straight line or along the dotted lines. Your child might be having trouble writing letters/numbers and not holding his/her pencil correctly.

I have looked up some activities for you to do with your child to strengthen their fine motor skills. This will improve cutting, writing, etc.

Check out the links to the right!

Other Tips:

Pre-Cutting Skills and Scissor Practice

• Tearing Paper- Let your child tear different types of paper when doing a craft. Tissue paper might be easy for them but construction paper might be more of a challenge. This strengthens the muscles in their hands and gets them ready for cutting.
• Stickers- Removing the white paper from stickers. This also helps.

Once you think your child is ready to cut with scissors, teach them how to hold the them.

Tell them to make sure their thumbs are always pointing at the ceiling like a “thumbs up”.

Once I have told them how to hold the scissors, I say ”open, shut them open shut them” over and over to let them know when to cut.

Have them start off cutting straws. They are easy to cut and it only takes one snip.

Then have them practice fringing paper. Most kids love doing this and it gets them use to it.

Once they can hold the scissors the right way, most kids love to cut everything.

Let them have lots of practice!!!!!