We have been working with our illustrator on some wonderful cutting activities for this week. Have fun cutting along the straight puddles and squiggly paths made by the elephant!

Cutting Benefits include: Focus and concentration, strengthening of hand muscles, hand eye co-ordination, bilateral co-ordination from holding scissors in one hand and paper in the other.

Cutting skills take time and practice to develop. Children should start showing some competence around 3-4 years, but these skills are generally only fully developed around 6 years of age.

For the younger children, tearing paper and cutting dough using blunts scissors is a wonderful way to start working on these skills.

Each child is different and will develop at their own pace, but here are some guidelines of what to expect depending on their age:

18 months: Ripping and play dough play. Children exercise their tripod grasp as they grip the paper to rip it. Ripping also requires children to move their hands in opposite directions at the same time which helps develop bilateral co-ordination skills.

2 years old: Once your child has learnt to hold scissors, open and close the blades using both hands and has spent time cutting dough and tearing paper with hands, they can start to master opening and closing the scissors with one hand and move on to making small snips on the paper.

3 years old: Remember to always encourage a “thumbs up” position while holding the scissors. Help them learn to hold scissors with one hand and make snips on the paper while moving the scissors forward across a page. Make this easier by keeping the size of the page they are cutting small. Cutting will not be accurate or be a continuous forward motion.

4 years old: Your child will learn to cut more accurately (near to the line). Work on cutting along a straight line at first, and then a curved line and then different simple shapes (circle, square).

5 years old: Your child will learn to cut out more complex shapes with greater accuracy.