Christmas Scissor Cutting Templates is a PDF book that works on two levels. It’s carefully designed to help children develop scissor cutting skills, but it also helps children produce attractive and useful Christmas crafts with Christian themes. The skills required are not limited to cutting.
Author Tracey le Roux drew on her training as an occupational therapist to create this book and others that help children with developmental skills. In Christmas Scissor Cutting Templates, the instructions for the activities guide children through coloring, cutting, punching holes, pasting, and assembling their projects. Children as young as three might be able to do some of the projects, and some of the more challenging projects will be enjoyable for children up through about age ten.
Projects range in difficulty. Some of the simple ones involve cutting strips of colored paper into small chunks and pasting them onto backgrounds to create a star or a Bethlehem scene. Among the more complex projects are a paper lantern, a 3D star ornament, and a red and green wreath constructed from strips of paper that are folded and stapled (with parental assistance) into a pattern on a paper plate.
Sometimes there are options for a particular project that offer more than one level of difficulty. For instance, there are a number of options for making gift tags. One gift tag activity has blank tags that can decorated or left plain. Another gift tag project has tags with pre-colored images and tags with line-drawn images for children to color.
Along the way, le Roux offers several tips for children on how to handle scissors, where to begin cutting, and how to hold the paper in a way that will help them be successful.
Templates and detailed instructions are included for each project. Duplicates of all of the templates are also assembled in a separate file for the convenience of those who want to print the entire file without selecting pages.
The activities are based on Christian Christmas themes, although le Roux leaves it to parents and teachers to make the connections between the crafts and the biblical events. So the projects include images of the Holy Family, angels, shepherds, and the wise men. Optional, prepared messages for home-made Christmas cards are Scripture based. And the “Mary’s Heart” project is based on the idea that Mary responded to the angel’s announcement “with her heart set on God.”
Christmas Scissor Cutting Templates is a gem that should be great for those who are just looking for creative Christmas arts and crafts.
