Fall is one of our favorite seasons. The trees are changing colors, the air has a crisp chill to it, and there’s so much to do! We wanted to share with you this fun scissor practice activity that also makes a pretty fall craft for preschoolers. All you need is some tissue paper in fall colors, some scissors, and a nice fall day.
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Falling Leaves Suncatchers for Scissor Practice
These suncatchers have a lot of fine motor work involved, which is just one more reason I love them so much for preschool. It’s not all scissor practice, either; it’s an entire art project that your preschoolers are sure to love!
I don’t know about you, but I go into the fall season with so much enthusiasm. There’s just something special about the earth smelling like dirt, the chilly evenings and the warm afternoons, and the way the sun shines so harshly it makes everything glow.
I go into my fall preschool theme with the same enthusiasm, too. I never seem to run out of creative ideas for what to include in a fall theme, and I never tire of the tried and true standbys, either.
One of the best things about this fall project is that it’s that healthy mix between fall crafts and fall process art. Yes, there is an intended outcome, but that outcome will vary greatly depending on the child. But what I love the most about it is the opportunity to practice scissor cutting in a safe way.
What I mean by that is this: all the cutting is completely free form, so preschoolers aren’t pressured by trying to make their cut pieces look like something specific.
FAQ About Teaching Scissor Cutting to Preschoolers
I get a lot of questions about how to teach preschoolers to properly use scissors. Here are a few answers to make scissor practice more successful and learning fun for your preschoolers.
Cutting paper or other materials into interesting shapes offers a unique way for kids of all ages (especially prekindergarten) to develop strength in both hands as well as coordination across their fingers and thumbs. Learning to use scissors isn’t just a fun craft project; it’s a self-help skill, too.
Pre-K is an important time for children because it’s when they first begin developing basic skills like manual dexterity. One of these foundational skills that can be developed early on with your child is scissor use, which helps them build hand control while also improving muscle development along the arms, wrists, hands, and fingers. So yes, scissor cutting is definitely a fine motor skill. You can find all our fine motor activities here.
Scissor skills come with practice. And there aren’t a lot of substitutes for using real scissors while practicing, either. Scissor cutting should always be practiced under the supervision of a responsible adult.
When practicing using scissors with preschoolers, offer a variety of materials. I like to start toddlers off with some playdough snakes they can snip at. Preschoolers can practice cutting the snakes into small chunks, being sure to snip all the way through. Then we might move to strips of foam; using foam will give your preschoolers the flat feel of paper but with added rigidity, which will help them keep control.
Cutting skills take time for children to develop. Around the age of three, most kids can handle small scissors with some level of skill; by four years old they might be ready for a big-kid pair which will make cutting through stiffer materials easier!
But because scissor skills are so complex and require fine muscle control, scissor mastery typically doesn’t happen until about six years of age.
Best Scissors for Preschoolers
Not all kids scissors are created equally. Through years of teaching experience, these are the scissors that seem to work best for my preschoolers:
The Westcott brand scissors are definitely my favorite scissors from the list above.
Related:
Materials
You can actually make these suncatchers in a couple of different ways, using different materials based on what you already have on hand.
I’ll walk you through how our preschoolers made this brightly-colored fall craft, but I’ll also explain at the end of the post other ways to get the same effect.
- coffee filters
- liquid water color (or regular watercolor paints)
- eye droppers or pipetts
- kid-friendly scissors
- plastic tray or baking sheet with a rim
- contact paper
The Set Up
Begin by flattening out the coffee filters. You’ll only need two or three per suncatcher depending on how big you want the overall product to be. Place the flattened coffee filter on a plastic tray with some liquid watercolor and a pippett.
Now invite your child to join you for some painting, cutting, and sticking.
Super neat trick!
The best–and I mean BEST–containers for liquid watercolors are glass baby food jars! They’re practically tip proof and you won’t be tempted to add too much to each jar.
Don’t have a baby? No worries. If I can’t get my preschool parents to donate some, then I buy some of my own and just use the baby food in smoothies for my kids and keep the jars.
Fallen Leaves Suncatchers for Scissor Practice
The first step is to paint the coffee filters. Because I’m so big on developing writing skills without the use of a pencil, I offered my preschoolers some liquid watercolors and invited them to use eye droppers to saturate the filter with paint. This project works just as well when using regular watercolor, but the color may not be as intense. And if you don’t have pipettes or eye droppers, you can also use a regular watercolor paint brush.
Once the coffee filters have had a chance to dry thoroughly, it’s time to make our fallen leaves by cutting the filters into tiny bits. This part is really fun for all preschoolers (even those without great scissor skills!) because there are no lines to cut. I invited my preschoolers to just snip any way they chose, but encouraged a small-ish size.
Once the filters were cut, they really did look like a pile of fallen leaves! And we couldn’t resist playing a bit.
After all the coffee filters have been snipped into small “leaves,” invite your child to place them on some contact paper. If you’re worried about the contact paper moving while the children are working, just use a little masking tape to keep them in place.
Many of my preschoolers treated this part like a puzzle, where they wanted to make the pieces fit into one another. Others placed the cut filter leaves randomly. It’s also ok if your preschooler overlaps some of the pieces; this will make a pretty effect on the suncatchers.
The finished suncatchers were beautiful, and the preschool parents loved them! To send the suncatchers home to parents, I just press them onto wax paper. Then when the preschooler gets home, the stick is still on the contact paper and it can be presses onto the window. Three of my own children did this activity and our back windows looked so festive! It got me thinking about what the window might look like if we made a giant suncatcher that covered the entire thing!
We kept our fallen leaves suncatchers up until they faded from the sun.
Ways to Adjust This Activity
Since this is a process-based fall activity for toddlers and preschoolers, there’s actually a few different ways to execute it. Here are some alternatives that will give a similar effect.
- Try using tissue paper if you don’t want to paint your own coffee filters.
- You can even use construction paper. You just won’t get the see-through effect of the suncatcher.
- If you don’t have liquid watercolors, you can use a water-based marker to color the coffee filters. Then spray them with water from a squirt bottle (an excellent hand strengthening activity) and proceed as described in the activity.
Falling Leaves Sun Catchers for Scissor Practice
These suncatchers are the perfect mix between fall process art and fall crafts for preschoolers. Plus, preschoolers get loads of scissor practice, too!
Materials
- coffee filters
- liquid water color (or regular watercolor paints)
- eye droppers or pipetts
- kid-friendly scissors
- plastic tray or baking sheet with a rim
- contact paper
Instructions
- Begin by flattening out the coffee filters. You’ll only need two or three per suncatcher depending on how big you want the overall product to be.
- Place the flattened coffee filter on a plastic tray with some liquid watercolor and a pippett. Now invite your child to paint them with all the fall colors.
- Once the coffee filters have dried thoroughly, invite your preschoolers to snip at them any way they choose (but encourage a small-ish size) to make the fall leaves.
- After all the coffee filters have been snipped into small “leaves,” invite your child to place them onto some contact paper. Ta da! All finished!
- To send the finished suncatchers home to parents, I just press them onto wax paper which can then be pressed onto their windows at home.
Notes
WAYS TO ADJUST THIS ACTIVITY:
Since this is a process-based fall activity for toddlers and preschoolers, there’s actually a few different ways to execute it. Here are some alternatives that will give a similar effect.
- Try using tissue paper if you don’t want to paint your own coffee filters.
- You can even use construction paper. You just won’t get the see-through effect of the suncatcher.
- If you don’t have liquid watercolors, you can use a water-based marker to color the coffee filters. Then spray them with water from a squirt bottle (an excellent hand strengthening activity) and proceed as described in the activity.
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I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
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