Developing Scissors Skills: Classroom Tips and Activities
Fine motor skills are an important part of childhood development. Building small muscle movements in the hands and fingers is essential for writing, dressing, eating, and manipulating small toys and objects—ultimately helping kids feel more independent. Cutting with scissors significantly helps kids improve these skills, and using the appropriate-size scissors helps ensure a natural grip so kids can focus on the task at hand. Want to find the right-sized scissors for your students? Check out our blog article, Fiskars: Scissors Sizes for Your Students.
Top benefits of using scissors include:
- Muscle Development: Continuously opening and closing the hand while cutting builds essential muscles in the palm.
- Hand-Eye Coordination: Cutting requires kids to precisely guide the blade along the cutting line while tracking it with their eyes.
- Bilateral coordination: Kids must engage both sides of their bodies by holding the paper down with one hand and cutting with the other.
- Focus and Attention: Cutting engages visual tracking and fine motor skills simultaneously, which actively engages the brain and improves concentration.
Download a cutting activity to use in your classroom! These activities were developed specifically for elementary school students by our friends and scissors experts at Fiskars.
Butterfly Jar: Bring the lifecycle of a butterfly to life with this fun cutting activity. Students can cut out the pictures and name each lifecycle stage, then cut out the jar and draw their own critter inside.
Student grade level: Pre-K-1
Days of the Week Paper Chain: Have students color, cut out, and sequence the days of the week, then fasten them together to make a fun paper chain. Removing each day as it passes helps kids visually understand and identify each weekday.
Student grade level: Pre-K-1
Garbage or recycling? This cutting activity helps kids decipher which item qualifies as garbage and which can be recycled to be used again. Have students cut out each item and glue them to the appropriate truck.
Student grade level: Pre-K-1
Build a Funny Face: Have students cut out the face shape and choose their favorite features, then glue them together to create a face that will make them smile.
Student grade level: Pre-K-1
Make a Wreath: A wonderful way to complement lessons on seasonal changes and symmetry—have students color each piece of foliage, then cut along the dotted lines to create a wreath shape. Students can then glue the leaves onto the wreath to create a beautiful work of art.
Student grade level: 2-5
Volcanic Eruption: Discuss the different parts of a volcanic eruption, then have students color the volcano parts, cut them out, and glue them together. You could then have students label the different parts of the volcano or write about how a volcano erupts in their own words.
Student grade level: 2-5
Comment below to share your thoughts!
52 Comments for Developing Scissors Skills: Classroom Tips and Activities
Little Learners need great scissors to work on building muscles and fine motor skills!
Practicing with scissors will help across the curriculum!
Kids must have the right-sized scissors to develop their fine motor skills successfully and build the correct muscle memory. It is just like using the wrong sized ball in P.E. This would discourage kids when they can’t do something well because the equipment is the wrong size. I know this as I am a PE teacher.
We use scissors for our 5th grade math notebook components.
Fiskars are the best type of scissors around! I use them as an adult and my students love them too!!
Kids need so much fine motor work! These activities help with this task!
I love the volcano activity for young students.
As a teacher, I use scissors daily for classroom activities, arts and crafts, and organizing materials. After trying out the Friskars scissors, I’m thoroughly impressed with their performance and reliability.
I think this is great. So often we miss the little things (which are actually there for a big outcome)! Let those little begin cutting to develop great skills! Thank you!
Students need to know how to this fundamental skill. This skill helps with other motor skills. Students need to be able to use scissors the rest of their lives. It also helps them to pay attention to detail and become more conscious of their work.
I love the activities.
Love the butterfly jar cutting activity
Garbage or Recycling? is a very cute activity. I love that not only are kids able to practice cutting, but they learn how to determine if something should be recycled or thrown away.
The butterfly cutting activity will go great with our butterfly unit! Thank you!
I am so excited about this contest! Thank you so much for the chance to win!!! 🙂
There is so much research on engaging both lobes of the brain which involves bilateral coordination. I love how the article mentions this.
Best scissors ever.
I really enjoyed this activity as it gave my students the opportunity to use their small hand-eye coordination skills to complete an activity that meets our second grade standards. I also liked how it provided an opportunity to label and extend their knowledge by writing how a volcano erupts.
I never knew there were this many differences between all the pairs of scissors.
Cutting is such an important fine motor skill that is often looked over. It needs to be explicitly taught and it can be difficult to find resources. These are valuable for my first grade students and giving them the practice that they need!
I am glad you have a variety of sizes and age recommendations. I teach upper elementary and use this guide for parents at the beginning of the year.
I teach fourth grade and we have been working on cuttting with our PBL that we do. We recently just cut felt which was a change for some students.
These are great! I will be using these in my kindergarten classroom this spring!
I think it is great that you are helping students who need more fine motor development. So many students, especially older students who were remote during COVID lost a lot of fine motor development and activity.
We are learning about the life cycle of butterflies and I’m excited for them to complete the butterfly life cycle in a jar activity! I am also keeping a copy of the garbage and recycle activity for Earth Day! Great resources to keep in my toolbox! Thank you Fiskar Scissors!
Over the years I have seen a decline in fine motor skills. Age appropriate scissors and activities help in so many ways. Thanks for some free cutting activities
Students need consistent practice with scissors. It helps with their precision and focus.
I love the variety of activities and that they provide a lot of cutting practice.
I have found that even my older students can use more practice with their fine motor skills….and patience!!
Hello, I am a Teacher that received an email about registering for a raffle for scissors. It seems like there is no entry form. Could you please advise as to where I should go to register? Thank you!
Build a funny face shows students different shapes can make a picture. Great activity
I did not realize that the size was so important for little ones just learning. I knew they needed child size, but had no idea how important it is
I like to give my students a “haircutting” activity after we go over and over and over that it is paper hair ONLY and never real hair on people’s heads. They have squiggly lines, zig zag lines, curvy lines, straight lines, etc. Sometimes I tape a paper to the table and they cut toward the table. They love these activities, especially because mom and dad don’t let them use scissors at home.
We use scissors a lot in my Explorations classroom. As a middle school teacher, the size of scissors needed can vary greatly. It would be good to have some that fit each students hands comfortably.
I feel as though teachers quickly assume (upper elementary especially) that students know how to handle scissors properly. Often, students are using them incorrectly, unsafely, or are taking a very long amount of time to cut a simple page. When we work on interactive notebooks, some students take an exorbitant amount of time and it often leads to frustration. I did not realize that the school-provided scissors were possibly to blame. It is very interesting to see that there are better suited/sized scissors for older students.
I love how comfortable these scissors are!
Thanks for all the great ideas. I will definitely use the life cycle of the butterfly. I love your product. Its quality is the best!
The best scissors ever! Thank you for this opportunity to win new scissors!
I am not seeing where to enter for the Fiskars scissors. I signed in under both of my emails so I can be sure to get the communications. I downloaded all the 1st grade materials as I will be teaching 1st next year.
Also I wanted to know how much a class set will cost?
Diane Navas
diana4esl@gmail.com
diane.navasmaldonado@washoeschools.net
These are great resources
Love fiskars scissors!!
I absolutely love this for students that need extra practice with their fine motor skills!
My students loved the build a volcano cutout activity!!
My favorite brand to cut with!! No other brand compares! I have been teaching for 25 years and nothing works better than Fiskars!
It is nice to see posts in which kids are encouraged to be creative and to use their imagination to the fullest. I loved doing these school projects in grade school years ago!
I find cutting practices help student gain better coordination that help with their handwriting. In my kindergarten classroom, we use our scissors a bunch so that they’re tiny hands build great strength!
I never knew how important it was to have the appropriate scissors for my little ones in my class. Thanks Fiskars!
Fiskars has always helped me to provide my kindergarten students the correct scissors for our classroom use. I highly recommend Fiskers for both school and home use. They are my go to scissors.
I defintely have been using the wrong size scissors for my fourth graders! I was talking with my co workers about how they have been coming to fourth grade with very little cutting skills, so that has been something I have been wanting to work on! Hopefully getting the correct size will help this.
My 4th graders use scissors almost daily to practice much needed fine motor skills, however, I didn’t even think about how important it is for focus and attention! That’s a great point!
I never realized there were so many different sizes and types of scissors. Thank you for the information!
As a second grade teacher, I see so many students who struggle with holding scissors correctly, cutting on a line, or even creating straight edges when cutting. I feel it has gotten worse over the years. I try to implement activities to have my students practice cutting things out often.