Category: Scissor Skills

Giant Scarecrow Project

10/12/2016

giant scarecrow craft project for preschool and kindergarten

This is one of our favorite fall craft projects to make!! We do it over a span of two to three days but you can adjust it to fit the needs of your early learners. We use large sheets of construction paper (usually sold right next to the regular sized construction paper) but if you do not want to make giant scarecrows you can scale the project down to make smaller ones.

You can either have the pieces already cut out for younger children to put together or have guide pieces set out for the children to use as a reference for cutting their scarecrow pieces.

You will need to have a head ... hat ... pants ... shirt body ... sleeves ... straw ... eyes and a nose. You will also need to have various colors of tissue paper that has been cut or torn into squares.

Once all of the pieces have been cut out it is time to put them all together. You can put them together any way you wish but I found that we had the most success starting with the head and working our way down.

The hat gets glued at the very top of the head and the shirt body on top of the bottom of the head. You want to make sure to leave enough room to make a face on the head.

The sleeves the next to get glued on and they should be glued behind the shirt body. The sleeves can be angled in any direction.

The pants are glued under the bottom of the shirt. We used three inch long strips of yellow paper glued to the bottom of the hat ... arms ... and legs to represent straw.

We glued the eyes and nose on the scarecrow head and also drew a mouth with a marker. The last step was to glue the tissue paper squares on the scarecrow.

You can see a video of this project below:

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Paper Plate Ladybug

6/10/2016

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Paper Plate Ladybug Craft For Preschool and Kindergarten

We made paper plate ladybugs this week and they turned out super cute. We did this project over a two day period to make sure we had enough time for the paint to dry.

To make the lady you will need red paint ... glue ... scissors ... black construction paper ... wiggles eyes ... and paper plates. We used the thicker chinette brand for our paper plates.

ladybug paper plate craft for preschool and kindergarten

The first step is to paint the back of the paper plates red. You can do this by using a paint and paint brush or a paint dauber. After we painted the plates we let them dry for the rest of the day.

We cut head shapes out of black construction paper and glued them on to the bottom of the paper plates.

The next step was to glue wiggle eyes on the heads. If you do not have wiggle eyes a different color of construction paper such as yellow or blue cut into small circles will work fine.

paper plate ladybug for preschool and kindergarten

We cut circle shapes out of black construction paper and glue them on to the painted paper plate. You can put as many or as little spots on the ladybugs as you want.

We cut black construction paper into 3-4 inch lengths and folded them back and forth (accordion style) for the legs. We glued three on each side of the paper plate.

We hung our ladybugs up around the room. The children got lots of fine motor practice through the use of scissors and gluing pieces together.

You can see a video of this project below:

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Butterfly Fine Motor Sheets

5/27/2016

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butterflyfine motor skills for preschool and kindergarten

I made a set of four butterfly themed learning sheets to work on both scissor and pre-writing skills. The patterns come in both black and white as well color so you have a choice of what to print.

butterfly fine motor sheets for preschool and kindergarten

I print the scissor skill sheets on regular paper for the children to cut and print the fine motor sheets on cardstock paper. I then laminate the cardstock sheets and set them out with washable markers. You can grab the patterns for free below.

butterfly fine motor sheets

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Cut and Glue Holiday Tree

12/4/2015

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Cut and Glue Holiday Tree Art Project For Preschool and Kindergarten

We made cut and glue holiday trees today and they turned out really cute!! This project was also wonderful for fine motor and scissor skills. We used red construction paper as our background and cut six rectangle shapes out of green construction paper.

We made each rectangle about 3/4 of an inch smaller than the one before it and the children arranged them from smallest to biggest on the background paper.

They cut a small square out of brown construction paper and glue it on to the bottom of the background paper. They then glued on each of the green rectangles (largest at the bottom ... smallest at the top). The last piece to cut was a small yellow circle which was then glue at the top of the tree.

Once all of the pieces were glued on the children applied glue drops on to the green rectangles and pressed sequins on. The picture above shows a lot of sequins but children can choose to put on the amount that they want.

You can see a video of this project by clicking below:

Cut and Glue Holidat Tree Art Project For Preschool and Kindergarten

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Paper Plate Owl

11/6/2015

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paper plate owl craft project for preschool and kindergarten

We made paper plate owls this week to go along with our owl theme. We took two days to complete the project but it can be done in one day if you paint the paper plates earlier in the day giving them enough time to dry so that you can work on them later in the afternoon.

paper plate owl craft project for preschol and kindergarten

To make this project you will need to have paper plates ... construction paper ... brown paint ... paint brushes ... scissors ... glue ... and sequins (optional). We used regular sized paper plates but you can also use the smaller paper plates. Heavy duty paper plates are not recommended for this project.

We started by painting the paper plates brown (two plates per child) and let them dry. We cut one of the paper plates in half and glued them on each side of the whole paper plate to make the owl wings.

paper plate owl craft for preschool and kindergarten

To make the eyes we cut circles out of yellow construction paper and glue them on. We then cut smaller circles out of black construction paper and glued them on top of the yellow circles. We put eight glue dots around each eye and pressed on sequins.

We made the owl's beak by folding a piece of orange construction paper and cutting a triangle shape out along the edge so that the beak would look like it was open.

For the owl's feet we made heart shapes with a squared bottom and glued them on behind the paper plate. We then put small glue dots on body and wings and pressed sequins on. This was really a great project for developing scissor and fine motor skills.

You can see a video of this project below:

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Puffy Paint Penguin

1/21/2015

5 Comments

Puffy Paint Penguin Craft Project For Preschool and Kindergarten

We made puffy paint penguins after circle time today. It was a great project for scissor skills ... sensory and fine motor development. We used black and orange cardstock paper to make the the penguins.

The next step was to make the puffy paint which was really easy. The children mixed 1 cup of shaving cream and 1/2 cup of white glue together with a craft stick. The puffy paint should be like a thick marshmallow topping ... if it is not you can add more glue.

The children applied the puffy paint to the penguins using either their fingers or craft sticks. The penguins took a while to dry because of the thickness of the paint.

You can see a video of this activity by clicking below: