Snipping Shamrocks

Glad that St. Patrick's Day leaves us with some fun crafts and activities to do, since (sorry to harp on it) it seems like we still have a bit of cold weather left!  Last week, I had parent/teacher conferences for my son, Anthony.  One of the things the teacher told me they were working on was what she called, "snipping."  Just having the children hold a piece of paper and cut around the edges... 

In other news, we are repainting our bathroom - which brought me to The Home Depot looking at tons of paint swatches.  There is something so appealing to me about seeing all of those colors under the bright lights - I feel like I want to take all different colors home - not just the slate gray I'm looking to use in the bathroom.

These two unrelated stories led me to this activity... Snipping Shamrocks!  Here's what you'll need:

Green paint swatches

Child scissors

Shamrock cut-out

Glue

Both Anthony and Michael love to cut, probably because it's not something I let them do very often.  I armed them each with a pair (close supervision, of course!) and told them to cut the white line that divides each shade of green.  I thought since the strips were thin that they would be able to cut the pieces off in just one or two snips.  I had to hold the strips for Michael, but Anthony was able to do it on his own.  Once we had some pieces cut, we started gluing them on the shamrock cut-out.  It didn't turn out to be the prettiest craft we've ever done, but the boys definitely got some good practice cutting! 

Holding, manipulating and using scissors are all important in developing fine motor skills.  This includes cutting in all forms - straight lines, curved lines, shapes, etc.  I found this page that has some great cutting printable for practice:  Cutting Practice Printables

St. Patrick's Day is a great time for introducing all that's GREEN - which is perfect for encouraging Michael to learn his COLORS.  Using the paint swatches which had various shades of GREEN allowed me to chat with Anthony about DARK and LIGHT green, as well as, which GREEN is the DARKEST and which GREEN is the LIGHTEST.  Comparatives and superlatives (think good, better, best) are also early developing language skill and an important precursor to higher level skills. 

This activity proved to be an easy way to encourage not only language development but work on fine motor skills as well!