Scissors Skills

 

SCISSOR SKILLS DEVELOPMENT CONTINUUM 

Cutting with scissors is a tricky skill that requires so many skills like overall fine motor strength, hand-eye coordination, bilateral coordination, visual-motor integration, and hand dominance. Just like any other skill, scissor skills will take time to develop and master. You can see the scissor skills developmental sequence below that students will go through as they learn how to cut with scissors. It’s important to do cutting activities at their level, so using scissors isn’t frustrating for students. As a student strengthens their fine motor and visual skills, their scissor skills will strengthen and develop too!

With scissor skills, students will develop…

• hand-eye coordination: use the eyes to visually guide movement for a task such as lacing beads or catching a ball
• bilateral coordination: both hands working together to do a task for example, one hand holds the paper and the other hand cuts with scissors
• visual-motor integration: ability to visually see something, process it, and use their hands appropriate, such as cutting on a line 
• hand dominance: the preference of using one hand instead of the other when doing both gross motor and fine motor tasks