Recommended Age: 3 and ½ to 5 years
Purpose: for the child to build on their scissor skills, further developing their fine and gross motor control and coordination and to engage in creative processes
Level of Parent Involvement: Low, the adult must give the child instructions then the child may make the octopus independently with low supervision
Prerequisites
- The child must be able to hold a pair of scissors correctly
- The child must be able to use the open and close motion whilst holding the scissors to cut on a line
Materials
- Octopus scissor skill template (see PDF)
- Coloured paper
- Coloured pencils or textas
- Scissors
- Glue stick (or sticky tape)
- Sponge
- Plastic placemat
- Tray
Preparation
- Print the octopus scissor skill template onto the coloured paper
- Arrange the materials on the tray
Steps
- Invite the child, letting them know that you have a creative activity to show them
- Show the child the tray with the prepared materials, the child may bring the tray to their table
- Let the child know that they are going to make an octopus out of coloured paper
- Show the child the line on the printed octopus scissor skills template, the child may cut on the line, creating two templates
- Invite the child to use their coloured pencils or textas to draw circles between each set of dotted lines to make the ‘suckers’ for the octopus’ tentacles
- When the child has finished they may use their scissors to cut on the dotted lines to separate the tentacles
- Show the child how to fold the paper to create a cylinder for the head
- The child may stick it together using the glue stick (or you may use sticky tape so that there is no drying time involved)
- Show the child how to use a pencil to roll/curl each of the tentacles
- The child may draw eyes and a mouth on the octopus
- When the child has finished decorating their octopus, they may make another one with the other template or pack up the activity and make another octopus on a different day
Variations
- None
