This is a great project to use when you are first introducing a child to scissors.  It requires single "snips" only.

Our younger cousin Kailey (age 5) made this maple leaf -- great job!!
 

You can make this appropriate for older children (kindergarten and up) by asking them to fill their templates with a particular type of shape (squares, rectangles, triangles, polygons, etc).

Materials:

• children's scissors,
• construction paper -- you can prechoose the color or let the kids pick their own
• glue,
• paper and printer

Instructions:

• ADULT:  print template of choice or make your own.
• ADULT:  Cut the construction paper into long, one inch wide strips (you can cut fast, they don't have to be perfect)

ex: 
 

• show the child how to hold their scissors.
• let the child snip off pieces from the strips of construction paper... as the children get older, you can ask them to try to snip perfect squares, but to begin with, just let them snip away

• Either squeeze the glue onto the template for the child or squeeze some into a margarine container lid and give the child a q-tip or popsicle stick to spread the glue themselves.
• Let the child fill the template with the snipped pieces -- don't worry that they go over the lines.
• Let dry.
• ADULT:  cut out the shape along the dark line (you should be able to turn the page over and see the dark black line through the back of the paper)

Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

Maple Leaf Template

Print friendly version of these instructions