Scissors are meant for those tiny fingers to create big inventions
Scissors is an important hand utensil that makes the world easy when it comes to important day to day activities in our routines like cutting out pack of namkeen when we are on a hunger pang , or cut strips of paper to make a mind blowing science craft and also when you need a good hair cut , how can you resists the scissors?
Well by now you would agree that scissors is an instrument that cuts everything. I wish we could use scissors to cut out toxic people and negativity from our lives too.
Scissors skills is a must for a child to accomplish. Research says scissors grip is as important as pencil grip. I would say you must celebrate once your child accomplishes the hold on scissors because it is as a good as an achievement as holding and controlling the pencil for writing
Well scissors grip is a kind of tripod grip similar to the one used to grip a pencil. It kinesologIcally is the job of the same fingerS as seen in the tripod grip.
You must be aware and very vigilant about the correct sequence of teaching the scissor grip to the child
Let begin now.
Lets familiarise ourselves with verbal cues to use when assisting the child to grab the scissors .
“Speak as you read this. Visualise as you speak”
1.Fingers go down
2.Thumb goes up
3.Open the scissor monster mouth
4.And you go chop chop …
Well practice it a few times. I am sure you will achieve it. I still get confused about where to place the fingers and thumb. The thumb should support the bigger hole in scissors and the fingers to fit into the small hole.
It is significant to start practice with the plastic scissors which has no blades in it
It is recommended to cut the play dough , clay or chapatti dough at first with these plastic scissors. This helps the child to understand the body planning and awareness about it .
As they cut the playdough. They get a visual and kinesthetic feedback that helps them to grade the amount of force and pressure to be applied by their hands on the scissors to cut well.
I would advice just start making snakes of play dough and present it to the child
Further , step is to switch to sharp blade scissors and present the child to cut ribbons , woollen strings, small piece of cloth . This will mature their ideation of application of force on scissors and better the finger planning and mapping in their brain. This is also because the fabric is thicker now. More strength is needed
Now its time to move forward and let the child explore cutting the paper.
For this very purpose draw slanting lines with dot prompts and in a few days graduate to curvy lines with mandatory dot prompts. Please don’t forget to see the images along with this write up.
Dot prompts are the points where the child holds the paper with non dominant hand.I have attached images to make it easier
After you feel the previous goal is achieved , you can start presenting spiral patterns.
You must be wondering when will the child move to cut shapes . Well now is the moment!
You can start with shapes that have straight lines e.g square , triangle , rectangle , diamonds and later encourage child to cut shapes that have curvy lines for e.g circles , ovals.
Don’t forget the trick of dot prompts . Don’t worry , there is an image to understand where to put dot prompts
Once the child is pro in cutting all of the above pre determined steps , you can let their creative streak come out by making them practice feather cutting. This is difficult to achieve and would take time . Please note feather cutting is also on paper not on a real feather. I am against animal abuse.
Keep your expectation low and patience very high.
Feather cutting is basically cutting the straight line on paper till halfway and not the complete line . This challenges the force modulation , working memory and planning skills in an individual . I will suggest that feather cutting is one of the steps involved in making paper lanterns . You can go back to your child hood days.
In conclusion , I want to shed light that practice each step on your fingers , then demonstrate to the child. This will help you to empathise with them when they fail.
You ‘’ll understand the struggle they might have to learn holding and manipulating the scissors.
Well I hope this was meaningful and quite informative and please don’t sue me if you find this boring
Lovely picture to help you are attached in this write up so that you can start right way.Please don’t forget to download the file , you ” ll definately not regret once you have a look
Creative efforts and scissor skills mentor – Heena Sahi