Scissor skills chick craft

This cute little chick is the perfect craft for celebrating Spring. It's also a great way to help your child develop fine motor skills by working those little hand and finger muscles. Your child will love honing their scissor skills by carefully snipping their chick's paper 'feathers'.

What are fine motor skills?

Fine motor skills are the precise, small movements that your child develops in their fingers and hands. Giving your child engaging and fun activites that develop these skills will help prepare them for things such as writing, tying shoelaces, drawing, painting, buttoning up clothes and using a toothbrush.

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To make these cute little chicks you will need:

• Yellow and orange paper

• Glue stick

• Scissors

• Googly eyes

• Pencil

• Small plate

Start by placing your plate on the yellow paper and drawing round it, then carefully cut out the circle. A grown-up might need to help with this, as very young children find cutting in a continuous line a bit tricky.

Now's the fun bit! You can give your chick feathers! Use scissors to make little cuts all around the outside, making sure you don't cut too deep.

This is a great way to practice controlling scissors as you need to use quite precise, small movements, but it doesn't matter if the fringing isn't even, it all adds to the charm!

Safety first: always supervise your child and ensure they are using child-safe scissors with blunt edges. 

You will notice that my little one is left-handed, so we gave him children's scissors that are specially adapted to use in left hands (the blades are reversed)

Next you can stick the googly eyes on with a glue stick. If you don't have googly eyes, you can make some using a small circle of white paper and a black marker pen dot in the middle.

To make the beak, just fold the edge of your orange paper over and cut out a triangle. Put glue on one half and stick on under the eyes. Then cut out some legs from the orange paper and glue those on.

There we go - one super cute chick with a furry little body using your child's emerging scissor skills.

And if your child wants to make more than one, they make sweet decorations for Easter - we've had ours stuck to the wall above our dining table for a few weeks now and they make me smile when I catch them out of the corner of my eye, especially my youngest's creation with his little wonky feet.

Not only is this craft great for strengthening hands and fingers, it's also great for hand-eye co-ordination and bilateral co-ordination (using both sides of your body simultaneously).

You don't need to stop at chicks, this scissoring technique works really well for any animal with feathers or fur. How about:

• Bear face made from dark brown paper with semi circles for ears

• Cat face made from grey paper with triangles for ears

• Lion face made from light brown paper with a smaller yellow circle in the centre

• Owl face made from white paper with a brown triangle nose

What other animals can your child suggest making?

For more ways to improving your little one's hand and finger movements, check out my guide to the best toys of developing fine motor skills

What animals have you made? Let me know in the comments!

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