Paper Chains--Cutting and Gluing

Find instructions for simple paper projects, such as folding, gluing, and cutting. These fun activities will keep those fingers busy and train fine motor skills.

As parents we want our children to get the finest education possible whether we consider that private school, homeschool, public school, or unschooling. We can help children jumpstart their education by beginning to develop the gross motor skills by encouraging walking, running, hopping, swinging, skipping and riding trikes and small bikes.

Many parents teach mental skills like simple counting, how to recite the alphabet, and recognition of the primary colors. Yet many children have not devolped their fine motor skills enough to begin school work. Some kindergarten teachers judge readiness by whether a child can easily tie his own shoe laces. Much practice using the fingers to manipulate small objects and simple tools like scissors, punches, paintbrushes, and tape dispensers help.

Paper work prepares the child for school work in several ways. First he learns to enjoy sitting and working quietly. he develops concentration. As many children are trained by television veiwing to pay attention only in short snippets this may be more important that you think. Secondly, a child is enabled for learning by learning to follow simple directions and do projects that necessitate the use of all the fingers. Thirdly, the actual folding, pressing and cutting and decorating are great for the fine motor skills.

My newest article is on cutting and gluing paper chains. Too simple? No, your child can benefit from measuring, cutting straight lines, and gluing the paper strips into chains.

Parents can work at developing these skills with preschoolers . Also try teaching sorting skills.

For a little older child try this project for sorting and classification.

Want some thing else more for the rough and tumble crowd? How about learning to fold paper airplanes? Paper fans, paper bird origami, making cards with a pop-up message, fold an envelope. Paper working can help develope the fine motor skills. These projects will be coming up in the following weeks. Check back for these on my suite home page.