20 Super Fun Cutting Activities for Kids

ByJanine Talbot Posted on

Kids Scissors

Cutting often proves to be a difficult task for kids. However, as with almost everything, continued cutting practices will help improve their cutting skills. Kids usually need parental guidance and lots of practice as they learn to use any cutting tool. The first thing they need to develop is hand strength, which is really important. When using scissors, they also need to learn how to open and close them using a grasp and release motion.

As they learn how to make small snips into things like paper and playdough, you will need to remind them how to hold the scissors correctly. With time, your kids can cut straight lines or even more complex shapes and lines. Here, we will take a closer look at some of the 20 fun cutting activities for kids.

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How Do You Teach Your Kids Scissor Cutting Skills?

Before your child is involved in any cutting activities, it is important as their guardian to ensure that they are fully equipped with the needed cutting skills. If not, the following are some simple scissor-cutting skill guidelines to help train your kids: First, get your child a pair of scissors to practice with. Training your kids with a blunt-edged pair of scissors is often advisable. Show your kid the pair of scissors and clearly explain to them what they are used for and how to properly use them. Hand the pair of scissors to your child and check it is well-positioned in their hands.

If their grip is not firm, continue to involve them in more scissor practice. If your child experiences trouble holding the scissors, you can place something appealing to them on the thumbnail to encourage them to keep the thumb when using the pair of scissors. Show your kid how to properly cut with the pair of scissors and train them on after-use scissors techniques after cutting.

As you guide your child on how to cut with a pair of scissors, make sure to set some boundaries or limits when cutting with the scissors. For quick results, making the child-friendly scissors practice part of their daily routine is advisable. Once your child has fully learned how to cut paper using a pair of scissors, you can try cutting other different materials and using other cutting tools to help improve their cutting skills.

Fun Cutting Activities for Kids

According to Dayswithgrey, below are some of the fun cutting activities you can try out with your kids:

20. Low Prep Cutting

This simple scissor cutting activity involves a piece of paper, a pair of scissors, and some practice time. You will also be required to draw some lines on construction paper and have your child cut across the lines.

19. Straight line cutting

This is one of the simplest ways to improve your child’s scissor skills. You can also make paper chains that can serve as an ideal decoration for your classroom or even at home. It is also great for beginner scissors users as it does not really matter if the cut lines are perfectly straight.

18. Dino cutting

Although this practice is a bit more challenging for your kids, it is highly beneficial in developing motor strength and skills. Dino cutting is not only the perfect engaging activity for your kids but also helps improve their hand-eye coordination.

Materials needed

  • Printer
  • Laminator
  • Dry erase marker
  • White paper
  • A pair of scissors

The Dinosaur Tracing and Cutting Strips printable park contains two different sets of strips. To use these strips for tracing, you can print them out and cut each individual strip. Laminate them and punch a hole in each of the strips to keep them together. Your child can use the dry erase marker to practice drawing over the black dotted lines, rub them out, and repeat them.

17. Food cutting

For this cutting activity, you will need to get some vegetables and fruits from your fridge. You can opt to pick a carrot and let your kid cut the carrot into small pieces. Food cutting also helps develop your child’s motor skills.

Materials

  • Leafy vegetables or herbs
  • Chopping board
  • A knife

Slicing is an essential knife cutting activity to master. This activity only requires you to cut your food into relatively thick, wide slices. You can stack the leafy vegetables or herbs on top of each other and roll them together to create a tube. Make nice slices across the rolled tube to produce thin ribbons.

16. Fan making activity

This process involves training your child how to make a fan by cutting a paper cup’s circumference and then attaching them to the base of a circle. Finish off with a pasted straw, and you will create an eye-catching fan that your kid will have fun playing with.

Materials

  • Paper, cardstock, wallpaper
  • Pencil
  • Ruler
  • Scissors
  • Tape, glue

With the pair of scissors, cut the blank sheet of paper to measure about 8-inch x 11-inch. This ideal measurement to work with. Using a pencil and ruler, draw vertical lines from the bottom to the top of the paper spaced 3cm apart. Fold the right side of the paper towards you and the same for the left side until the vertical pleats of the paper extend up and out. Bind the bottom of the folded strip with glue or tape and open the folds at the top of your fan.

15. Tape cutting

With the festive season around the corner, you can make the holiday more fun by trying out tape cutting with your kids. In this cutting practice, you can hide gifts under a table and completely enclose all the table’s legs using tape, ensuring no gift is exposed. Then, ask you, kid, to cut through the tape if they want to see their presents.

14. House building activity

The House building activity is often a challenging cutting activity for kids but is very effective in developing hand strength and motor skills. In this practice, you will ask your kid to create a 2-dimension house by cutting geometrical shapes and attaching them.

Materials

  • Construction paper
  • Glue stick
  • A pair of scissors

Start by showing your child how to cut the width of the construction paper to form rectangles. Use the glue stick to attach these pieces to a blank paper. Cut a large triangle for the roof and some square windows and glue them. Make your house more realistic by adding a chimney and a rectangle door.

13. Clay cutting

This is one of the most engaging cutting activities for your kids. They can also expand their creativity by creating several shapes with clay.

Materials

  • Modeling clay
  • Plastic straws, reusable straws, craft sticks
  • Scissors

Cut the straws into various lengths and roll out the clay strips to match the length of the sticks or straws. Arrange different straw lengths in a clay base from the tallest to the shortest. Make circles with strips of clay and stack them on the base.

12. Tray cutting

In addition to keeping everything in order and arranged in one area, trays are perfect for different cutting activities. This cutting practice can be made more interesting by including different themes and appealing stickers.

Materials

  • Tray or container
  • Colored cardstock
  • Pair of scissors
  • Marker pen

Grab a container or tray to put paper in. Cut several pieces of the colored cardstock in halves with the pair of scissors. Draw lines, slits, and other desired designs on each of the papers with a marker pen. Stick the cut paper in the tray and give it to your child to cut and explore as much as they would like.

11. Pasta cutting

According to Happytoddlerplaytime, this is one of the simplest cutting activities for your kids.

Materials

  • Cooked pasta
  • Food coloring
  • Pair of scissors

Pasta cutting is also the perfect low prep cutting activity that will certainly interest your kids as they are amazed at how it is easy to cut through pasta.

10. Playdough cutting

Playdough cutting activities are the perfect way to improve your child’s hand strength and establish a firm foundation for improving their motor skills. In this activity, dough scissors are advisable, which make it very easy for your kids to cut through playdough.

Materials

  • Playdough
  • Pair of dough scissors

Start by breaking off the large pieces of dough and flatten them out, but not too thin. Make various patterns on the flattened dough and provide your child with a pair of scissors to cut through the patterns.

9. Straw cutting

Like playdough cutting, straw cutting is another way to improve your kids’ motor skills and hand strength. In this activity, you can opt to use paper or plastic straws that both work the same and add a bit of challenge to your child’s hand muscles.

Materials

  • Straws
  • Pair of scissors

This activity is very simple; all you need to do is provide your child with straw supplies on a craft tray and allow them to explore on their own.

8. Paper plates lion

Materials

  • Paper plates
  • Pair of scissors

Paper plates can be created into lion art. All you need to do is make a circle in the center of the paper plates and cut several slits around the created ring. These small slits around the center of the cut paper appear as the mane of a lion. This is a fun low prep activity to engage your kids and help improve their creativity levels.

7. Grass trimming

Is your kid a fan of outdoor activities? Then it would help if you tried grass trimming. This will help improve their motor skills and allow them to bond with nature. Alternatively, it can be performed indoors.

Materials

  • Stickers
  • Pair of scissors
  • Construction paper
  • Glue

With the pair of scissors, cut a green-colored sheet of construction paper, creating vertical stripes to resemble grass and the edge to a blank white paper. Hand the scissors to your child and let them cut the grass. You can make this activity interesting by hiding fun stickers behind the green construction paper and allowing your child to discover them while cutting.

6. Fingernail trimming

This is a super fun activity of bonding with your child. To make this simple cutting activity more interesting, you can use a piece of paper and colored paper for the nails. Start off by trimming or filling your child’s nails. You can push down on the fingertip skin so you can easily get the nail clipper around both sides of the nail. Finish off by smoothing the rough or sharp nail edges. If your kid loves coloring, you can decide to color the nails after trimming.

5. Haircut Scissor activity

Materials

  • Child safe scissors
  • Paper plates
  • Marker pen

In this activity, you will need to get your paper plates and draw a face, ears, and some vertical lines to serve as the hair. Give your child a pair of scissors and guide them on how to cut each of the hair lines. You can make this activity more fun by drawing different facial expressions on each paper plate.

4. Firework art

Are you looking forward to making cutting activities more fun for your kids? Then it would be best if you tried firework art. In the firework art, you will need to dry some coffee filters in various colors and allow your kid to cut them into fireworks. You can also use paper plates instead of coffee filters, depending on your child’s hand-cutting strengths. According to Picklebums, the firework art activity might prove to be difficult for your kid at the first attempt, but this practice is very vital for developing your child’s hand-eye coordination.

3. Cutting Popsicles

Materials

  • Pruning shears
  • Popsicle sticks

Cutting popsicles is super fun and cheap summer activity that is perfect for improving your child’s scissor cutting skills. Popsicle sticks are very easy to cut, providing you have the right cutting equipment. Guide your child when using the pruning shears as they cut the popsicle sticks to their preferred lengths.

2. Leaf Cutting

Leaf-cutting is not only an ideal scissor skills activity but also the perfect way to get them outdoors. During this practice, you can have them collect some leaves from the backyard and bring them indoors or even cut them while outside. Make sure to provide them with a leaf cutting tray so that you can examine how they cut the leaves after.

1. Picture cutting

Last on our list for the super fun cutting activities for your kids is picture cutting. In this practice, give your child various pictures, have them cut into smaller pieces, and later stick them back together like a puzzle. Puzzles are very effective in improving your child’s cognitive skills and are also very entertaining.

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Janine Talbot

Janine is passionate about parenting. As a mother of 5 she knows a thing or two about how to raise children. She has a love for food, travel, and making sure her children stay on the right path.

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