There are many benefits to cutting with scissors, including:

• Independent movements of each finger
• Strengthens hand muscles
• Bilateral coordination skills (two-handed coordination)
• Visual perceptual tasks (directionality)
• Visual motor skills (eye-hand coordination)
• Fine motor skills (separation of hand, finger dexterity)
• Promotes grasp pattern
• Focus and attention

Cutting gives young children independent movements of each finger. Cutting with scissors works on the separation of two sides of the hand and strengthens hand muscles. Bilateral coordination is also addressed when they have to hold the scissors in one hand and paper in the other. Often, you will see kids with their elbow all the way out to the side and the scissors upside down when they are cutting. An easy fix for this is to have them hold a piece of paper or a manilla folder between their arm and side to help them to stabilize their arm and bring their shoulder down. Then, they can hold the scissors correctly. The other thing I do is draw eyeballs on the scissors to cue them to the right position. Cutting on a line and switching directions are great visual motor activities. The positioning of the scissors in a child’s hand also starts to work on the tripod grasp. It is important to educate your administrators as to why scissors are so important in kindergarten and preschool as it is a precursor for handwriting. Cutting, along with coloring, also help with focus and attention. If I have a child that does not want to write, I let them do some coloring and cutting activities, and they are able to calm themselves.

Fine Motor Strength

The open and close motion of cutting allows children to build up the small muscles in their hands. These muscles serve an important purpose as they are the same muscles that will allow your child to hold a pencil, as well as carrying out everyday independent tasks such as brushing teeth, eating with utensils and getting dressed.

Hand-Eye Coordination

The task of cutting requires children to use their hands and eyes in unison. Developing hand-eye coordination is not only important for catching/throwing balls, eating with a spoon and zipping a coat, researchers have more recently discovered a strong correlation between hand-eye coordination, learning abilities, and social communication skills.

Bilateral Coordination

Bilateral coordination refers to the ability for children to coordinate both sides of their body at the same time in a controlled manner . Cutting is a task that demonstrates the need for children to use both their left hand and their right hand simultaneously to carry out individual tasks, with one hand holding the paper and the other opening and closing the scissors.