Paper Plate Hair Cut Craft
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Paper plate haircuts are a fun way to practice scissor skills for toddlers and preschoolers.
This simple craft can be set up and ready to play within minutes and can present other valuable incidental learning opportunities at the same time.
Paper Plate Hair Cut Craft
Watching Miss 4 try and manipulate her scissors around a design the other day brought to my attention an area we need to practice.
A lot of skill goes into using a pair of scissors.
Both the left and right sides of the body are required to work together to complete the task. Not to mention the strength in the hands to wield the blades together and hand-eye coordination.
To increase the chance of success whilst Miss 4 practiced her snipping, the plate was the perfect medium!
Paper can be quite limp making it more challenging to work with.
The rigid cardboard that makes a good old paper plate was the perfect base for our crazy hair cuts.
What you need to make paper plate hair cuts
- Paper Plates
- Marker
- Scissors
It didn’t take long to draw up three smiling characters and have Miss 4 snipping away.
She was engrossed in her task from the get-go however needed a little coaching to get her using the correct technique.
1. “Thumbs up!”
A catchy little line that most kids are already familiar with. Thumbs up for a great job and thumbs up top when using scissors.
2. “Watch out for your helping hand.”
It’s not going to be able to help if it has been snipped – safety first!
3. “Helping hand does the grooves”
It’s the helping hand that moves the paper while snipping. The scissors should stay still while the paper is being moved between the blades.
It didn’t take her long to snip down the lines to give each of the characters a full head of hair.
After a quick conversation about the similarities and differences our characters had, I gave Miss 4 the task of styling their hair and giving them a hair cut.
The three characters had perfectly styled looks and Miss 4 was so proud of her work.
This activity not only helped her with refining her snipping skills but also increased her self-confidence when it came to using scissors.
Once she finished her styling activity, as quickly as she started she moved the pieces of ‘hair’ into her kitchen zone and began baking. Waste not, want not!
We will get this activity out again. Miss 4 loved it. I’m thinking of animals next time. Perhaps an echidna, dog, and sheep…
Love this type of post. DIY with your kids is the best way for them to learn about art, finger muscle, creativity, parent/kid relationship. So many benefits we as parents should do more instead of playing on phones
i have two toddlers and this exercise is something appropriate to my older toddler. he will surely have lots of fun doing this and also learn from the activity. thank you for sharing.
Any type of activities like this is great for kids. Not only they are engaged but also they learn and develop great skills
This is such a fun activity for thekids!! This can actually be incorporated in kiddie parties, too. Her works are lovely!! I can see that she really enjoyed every bit of it!
This is an awesome activity. Kids would love it and it helps them learning fine skills.
Thank you! It’s really fun! Certainly better than trimming their own hair too!
Aww so cute. I love arts and crafts. When I start having kids and this get old enough for crafts we will definitely be making stuff all the time.
Thank you! Kiddies can learn so much through play and creating. Your future family will love it?
awww I just love this idea! We have these paper plates readily available and my kids would totally love to do this! I can’t wait to try it with them, i’m sure they will love it! Any time away from screen time is my favorite!
This is great! My daughter has special needs so finding interesting ways to use scissors is very important. I think she would enjoy this!
This is such a great idea for getting kids used to using scissors. I’ll have to try this with my kids and see if they can improve those cutting skills 🙂