Early Skills Archives

Meagan England

Cut, Match and Paste Shapes Printable

Cut and paste activities are important for kids because they help them to develop fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and creativity. They also help kids to learn about shapes, colors, and textures.

Here are some of the benefits of cut and paste activities for kids:

Fine motor skills: Cut and paste activities require kids to use their hands to cut and paste paper. This helps to develop their fine motor skills, which are important for tasks such as writing and using scissors.
Hand-eye coordination: Cut and paste activities also require kids to use their eyes and hands together. This helps to improve their hand-eye coordination, which is important for tasks such as catching a ball and riding a bike.
Creativity: Cut and paste activities allow kids to be creative. They can use their imagination to create different shapes and patterns. This helps to develop their creativity and imagination.
Shapes, colors, and textures: Cut and paste activities can help kids to learn about shapes, colors, and textures. They can use different shapes and colors of paper to create their pictures. They can also use different textures of paper, such as sandpaper and tissue paper.

Download the free Cut and Paste Shape print out by click on the image!

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Meagan England

Back to School Cutting Practice for Fine Motor Skill Development (Free Downloads)

Learning to cut with scissors helps a child learn to do so much more than just cut! It helps build hand strength by opening and closing the scissors which in turn helps children build their fine motor skills. The small muscles in their hands are important and help our little ones draw, brush their teeth, get dressed, and use cutlery. There are also high chances of 4/5 year old who uses scissors to have nice and legible handwriting. Cutting and writing use the same skills, and practice makes better.

When shopping for scissors try to match the size of the scissors as close to your child’s hand size as possible. Pick scissors with a blunt point, but that are sharp enough to cut and not just fold the paper.

Before your little one starts learning to use scissors have the safety talk and purpose of scissors talk. I suggest doing a review each time before you give them scissors to practice or craft. It will seem like too much, but they need lots of reminding before they remember safety and purpose of scissors.

For the Back to School, download, and print these adorable scissor practice sheets. You can print in color or black and white. Scroll to the bottom of the post to download more free activities for your child or classroom.

More Fine Motor Skill Activities

Cut, Match and Paste Shapes Printable

Back to School Cutting Practice for Fine Motor Skill Development (Free Downloads)

Garden Gnome Cutting Practice for Fine Motor Skill Development (Free Downloads)

Easter Before and After Letter Practice

Ziplock Bag Tracing Activities for Handwriting and Phonics Activities

St Patrick's Day Before and After Letter Practice

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Meagan England

Garden Gnome Cutting Practice for Fine Motor Skill Development (Free Downloads)

Learning to cut with scissors helps a child learn to do so much more than just cut! It helps build hand strength by opening and closing the scissors. The small muscles in their hands are important and help our little ones draw, brush their teeth, get dressed, and use cutlery.

For May, download and print these adorable scissor practice sheets. You can print in color or black and white

Click Here to Download!

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Meagan England

Easter Before and After Letter Practice

Are you looking for practice for alphabetical order without the traditional putting words into alphabetical order? This practice sheet would be great for your students. The students write the letter that comes before and after the letter shown for each question.

You can print and have students write directly on the sheet or you can print and place it in a dry-erase pocket so you can print once and use it many times.

You could also use magnet letters with this sheet by laminating the sheet and then asking students to place the letter that goes before and after! Now you can use the printable over and over, plus kids are having a hands-on experience.

alphabet before and after worksheets pdf

Click Here to Download!

Insert Lead Generation

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Meagan England

Ziplock Bag Tracing Activities for Handwriting and Phonics Activities

Are you looking for an activity you can use over and over with students or kids? Ziplock tracing is a great activity to practice handwriting, sight words, and so much more.

The best part of this post and learning resource is this post will continue to grow as I create more Ziplock bag tracing sheets for you to use with your students or kids.

Tip: Be sure to cut an inch or two at the top to help the page fit perfectly into the ziplock gallon-sized bag. Also, don’t feel the need to remove the writing on the bag, flip it over and use the side without writing.

Click here to download version 1 of Sight Word Trace

homeschool activities for preschool kids

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Meagan England

St Patrick's Day Before and After Letter Practice

Are you looking for practice for alphabetical order without the traditional putting words into alphabetical order? This practice sheet would be great for your students. The students write the letter that comes before and after the letter shown for each question.

You can print and have students write directly on the sheet or you can print and place it in a dry-erase pocket so you can print once and use it many times.

You could also use magnet letters with this sheet by laminating the sheet and then asking students to place the letter that goes before and after! Now you can use the printable over and over, plus kids are having a hands-on experience.

Click here to download the free printable!

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Meagan England

When Should You Teach Your Child to Identify Shapes and Colors (Plus Free Resources)

free printables for toddlers with shapes

Parents often wonder when they should begin working on different concepts with their children, like shapes and colors. Most children will be ready to start learning their shapes and colors when they are 18 months old. The most important advice I can provide parents is that every child is different, and some children may need until two years old to learn their shapes and colors.

The key to teaching your child shapes and colors is to start during play. When you are building with blocks or playdough, talk about the color. For example, “I will put the yellow block at the top” or “I like how you made the cat out of the pink playdough.” Then move into asking them what color or shape things are around the house and while you are out of the house.

Then you can look to start using printables like the one below. There are different ways you can use the printables after you have printed them.

Lay them out and ask your child to pick any card they’d like to tell you what the color or shape is.
Play goldfish
Match the shape to the word of the shape
Hide them around the house and tell your child if they find all the cards and tell you what they are when they find them then, they will earn a surprise!

To help the cards last longer, laminate the cards. The laminator I use at home can be found here.