Fine Motor Toys for Improved Handwriting and Pencil Grip This article provides fine motor toys…

Valentine’s Scissor Strip Sheet Deck
This article provides a free scissor strip sheet deck with a Valentine theme. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge with visual processing you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.
I have a fun Valentine’s themed sheet deck for you that will get kids working on their scissor skills. Holding scissors and cutting across the page is a challenging task for many kids. It takes a lot of hand strength and coordination. And, there are many pre-scissor skills that require strengthening and practice.
Before kids can sharpen their scissor skills to cut out shapes and objects, it’s important to practice with lines and simple cutting activities. The Valentine’s scissor strip sheet deck gives kids the opportunity to try simple cutting activities before moving to more advanced projects.
Each activity builds on the other and is perfect for the home or a therapy setting. Therapists and parents can use the Valentine’s scissor strip sheet deck to help kids become comfortable and familiar with using scissors regularly.
Scissor Skills
If you are just introducing scissors to a child’s routine, you may want to take a step back. First, we want to determine if the child is developmentally ready for using scissors. Believe it or not, scissor skills develop in stages. When a child’s motor skills are finely tuned, that’s when they are ready for holding scissors and cutting across the page.
Before putting scissors in your child or student’s hands, encourage them to participate in activities that strengthen the fingers, hands, palms and wrists. Any activities that improve the child’s find motor skills are essential for successful scissor practice.
Benefits of Developing Scissor Skills
Using activities like the Valentine’s scissor strip deck can help kids feel more confident as they use scissors. Cutting with scissors is not only fun for kids, but it also helps them develop their bilateral coordination skills, hand-eye coordination and much more.
Scissor strips encourages kids to use their fingers and hands independently of one another. As we know, many other tasks require this type of dual coordination (for example, reading and writing).
A few additional benefits that come with scissor practice include:
- Independent movements of each finger
- Strengthens hand muscles
- Bilateral coordination skills (two-handed coordination)
- Visual motor skills (eye-hand coordination)
- Visual perceptual tasks (directionality)
- Fine motor skills (separation of hand, finger dexterity)
- Promotes grasp pattern
- Focus and attention
Free Valentine’s Scissor Strip Sheet Deck
The free Valentine’s Scissor Strip sheet deck is designed for parents, therapists, teachers and other professionals. The sheet deck can be used to enhance the handwriting skills of children of all ages and levels.
An older child may even benefit from scissor line practice if they struggle on basic concepts or if their skills are delayed. The free PDF sheet deck is a digital copy only and can be saved directly to your computer or hard drive.
After the sheet deck is saved, use the digital copy to print and re-print copies. This gives the child a chance to perform the exercises multiple times. Or, the sheet deck can be used for multiple students.
To get your copy of the Valentine’s Scissor Strip sheet deck, enter your email address in the form below.
Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs