Hi there, it sure has been a while. I am back from a short hiatus to bring you more fun ideas for your whole family. My toddler is growing by leaps and bounds, now a touch older than 3 1/2, and one of her summertime accomplishments was learning how to use scissors – properly and safely. While in France last year I bought her the cutest pair of kiddie scissors with a bunny holster that, with the help of a magnet, sticks to the refrigerator. They wound up being a stocking stuffer last Christmas, but she did not start using them until July or so. At first she would just cut paper into strips while we watched and gave instruction. She got the hang of it quickly and was eager to do something new and more challenging…and that is when I saw a stack of magazines piled up in the corner. The Hanna Anderson catalog sitting on top gave me the idea of having my daughter practice cutting pictures of kids and their clothes and then use her glue stick to arrange them on pages of her oversized Crayola floor pad.
The floor pad is the perfect canvas for such a craft project. An easel would work wonderfully as well, allowing your little collage artists to visualize their masterpieces while standing up – if they so choose. Cutting pictures of sweaters, pants, hats and more serves as an “Operation”-like exercise of clipping so carefully around the images being cautious not to slice off the sleeves, pant legs, heads, etc. Gluing them to the paper is a fun way to mix and match outfits and even body parts – the results often will be hilarious!
Encouraging toddlers to work with scissors is a terrific way to strength their fine motor skills and having them cut up and paste photos from magazines can get those creative juices flowing. This exercise also helps rid the house of those holiday catalogs. Consider a project where instead of a Christmas wish list, your child compiles a visual Christmas wish collage – that will surely impress the elves!
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