Talking Scissors
Put a pair of scissors on your hand and have the child put a pair on his hand.
Open and close your scissors in a certain pattern and ask the child to imitate/repeat what your scissors “said” using his scissors.
Skill: Cutting
Learning to hold scissors correctly and guide them along a line while holding the paper steady with the other hand. This combines hand strength with coordination.
Finger Puppet Mouse
Using the construction paper and pencil, draw a circle onto the paper.
The circle needs to be about 8 inches across, so if you are not comfortable with drawing a circle on your own, you can draw round something like a cup or a bowl. Mark the middle of your circle with a small dot.
Take the scissors and carefully cut around the circle that you have drawn. Then make one cut from the edge of the circle to the middle that you have marked, and then another cut a quarter of the way along so you cut a wedge out of the circle.
Bring one cut side over the other side of the paper, creating a cone shape, the more you overlap the two side, the thinner the cone will be. Stick the sides down firmly with the glue.
Cut the string into 4 very short pieces for the whiskers, and a longer bit for the tail, carefully using the scissors.
Stick the tail onto the base of the cone using the glue, and two whiskers either side of the cone near the top.
Take a colored pen and draw a nose on the very end of the cone. You can choose any color you want but black or pink usually work best.
Stick on the two wiggle eyes on the top of the cone, just above the whiskers.
For the mouses’ ears, take the construction paper and cut out two tiny circles and stick these just behind the eyes.
Your Very Own Fish Tank
For this activity, you need to use blue, orange, and yellow construction paper. You would also need to use a single hole puncher.
On a piece of blue construction paper, draw a square (in a size that will fit inside the ziplock bag) with wiggly lines. Ask the child to cut the square that you drew and stay within the wiggly lines (thickness of the line depends on the child’s skills and development).
Draw a fish on the orange or yellow paper and have the child cut it out. Depending on the child’s skills, you can have the child trace a picture of a fish or draw his own fish.
Glue the fish onto the blue sheet. Ask the child to draw eyes, fins, gills, and mouth on the fish and add any plants on the blue paper. Use a hole punch to punch bubbles in the blue paper (coming out of the mouth of the fish and above). Place the blue sheet into the ziplock bag. Place the oats on the table or in a small shallow plate and ask the child to pinch the oats and drop into the bag, to represent the floor of the tank. Repeat this activity a few times, until there is enough oats on the bottom of the bag. Seal the bag nice and tight.
Cut Me a Tree
For this activity, you will need to use brown and green construction paper.
Have the child trace your hand on the green paper, then trace one or two of their own. On the brown paper, ask the child to draw a large rectangle (depending on the child’s developmental skills, you might have him trace or copy the rectangle). Let the child cut the traced hands and rectangle he drew.
On a large piece of construction paper, have the child glue the large hand on the rectangle, fingers pointing down, then the other hands, fingers pointing down as well (for a blooming tree, have the child glue the traced hands with the fingers pointing up). Using colored foam sheets, let the child draw and cut other shapes, then glue them on the tree as ornaments or flowers. To promote pincer grasp, have the child use the stickers for additional decorations.
TP Roll Snake
Pull open the TP roll all the way.
Provide the child with paint and a brush and instruct him to paint it. You can also choose markers or crayons to color the snake.
Once dry, you can have the child use Q-tips to paint the snake, or crumble little pieces of tissue paper, and/or use stickers.
Depending on the child developmental skills, either cut a snake’s tongue out of red construction paper or have him cut it himself.
Finally, the child can glue the tongue and the wiggly eyes on one end of the TP roll. If you don’t have wiggly eyes in hand, you can use small buttons.