Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Flower Cutting and Fine Motor Skills


My 4 y/o daughter loves flowers and enjoys wandering in our front and back yard picking them.  Some flowers she can easily pluck off with her fingers but our Black Eyed Susan flowers require something more to get the flower off.  I saw this as an opportunity to let her use her scissors, with my supervision of course.  By no means should a child ever be left unattended with scissors.  I went over the safety rules of using scissors by explaining how to safely hold scissors when walking with them in your hand and that you should never use scissors to cut anything other than paper unless your are doing a craft/activity with Mom, Dad, Teacher or another adult.  We also use scissors appropriate for children which are not as sharp as regular scissors.

This cutting activity helped with her fine motor skills and is also a practical life lesson.  We even got a short lesson on bees since we have these beautiful white and purple flowers, which I don't know the name of, but the bees love them.  This gave us the chance to talk about bees and how they get nectar from the flower and bring it back to the hive to make honey.



After my daughter is finished cutting the flowers I always make sure to display them!









19 comments:

  1. Great idea for fine motor and of course enjoying the great outdoors. My son would benefit from helping me like this. Thanks for sharing I'll be trying with my son :)

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  2. My kid's love to cut flowers too! Hadn't thought about how good it is for fine motor skills... seems just about perfect!

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  3. Beautiful! My daughter likes to cut our grass with scissors too :)

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  4. Love this idea! My little girls love flowers :) I will have to do this with them. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. Life is a lesson all in its own. I like how you found so much in an activity of clipping flowers. She picked beautiful flowers for you also.

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    1. Thanks, Natasha! She loves to cut the flowers and put them into her 'flower basket!'

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  6. I'm sure your daughter was so proud of this! And it is a great way to practice developing motor skills. We routinely go over what we call "scissor safety" in our home. This was awesome!

    Thanks for sharing with the SHINE Blog Hop!

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  7. This is a great activity! Learning and developing skill at the same time! Thanks for joining with us at #pintorials

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  9. The combo of flowers, kids and scissors is brilliant. Thanks for sharing at the Love to Learn Linky.

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  10. What a great idea!! We love picking flowers at my house as well. Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!

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  11. Great activity!!
    I would love to have a garden to explore more with my little one,I'm taking her to the park and she is watering our kitchen plants though:)
    Simple things can make them so happy!!!

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    1. So true! The simplest things are sometimes the best!!

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  12. This looks like a fun activity. I think I would have to monitor my preschoolers, they would probably enjoy it so much they would want to cut every flower in the yard.

    Mommy Crusader
    Mommy Crusader.com

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  13. It was fun, Deborah! I agree close supervision is a must on this one!

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