Remember how I was hesitant to offer L a glue stick?  Well, then I gave her SCISSORS!  I know, crazy mama over here.  But if you teach your child the right way to use things, they won’t experiment and cut off all their hair [hopefully].

To set up this work, I put a pair of children’s scissors in a small container on a tray.  I cut strips of construction paper and drew lines going across the paper.

L was ecstatic to find this work, since before this I wouldn’t let her touch scissors.  Once again, we first had a long talk about the scissors.  I told her that she had to be sitting down at her table if she wanted to use the scissors, and that they were ONLY for paper.  I showed L how to hold the scissors and cut along the lines on the paper.

I’ve had this work out for a few months now, and L is just starting to master it.  It took A LONG TIME for her to gain the muscle control to open and close the scissors with just one hand when she wanted it to happen.  Once she figured that out, it took another few weeks for her to be able to get the scissors on the lines to cut them.  But she worked hard at it every day until she was able to do it by herself.  When she has finished cutting, we put the scraps in her easel for her Contact Paper Collage work.

For older children, you can draw more complicated designs on the paper to be cut out.