Making Paper Snowflakes

While we were on Christmas vacation from school, I wanted to give my children the opportunity to practice cutting.  Scissor skills are so important for young children.  It helps them strengthen hand muscles and coordination for later skills such as writing.     I thought that it would fun if we made paper snowflakes.  
This activity was fairly easy for my son who is in Kindergarten, but my daughter who is pre-school aged needed more assistance.   Of course, mom also made snowflakes too.

We ended up making so many snowflakes that we decided to make it snow in our dinning room.  The pictures are not the best but you can see what we did.    We tied white thread to the snowflakes then taped the string to the ceiling.  


It honestly had been a long time since I had done this, so I had to look up some instructions.   It was a great family activity.   


These instructions can be found at Kinderart.

What You Need:

• Paper (make sure it is square).
• Scissors (and some adult help for the littles).

What You Do:

1. Get a square piece of paper or trim a piece of paper so that it is square.
2. Fold your square in half diagonally (have a look at the picture).
3. Fold your triangle in half - again diagonally (look at the picture above).
4. Fold paper in thirds ... one side to the front, the other to the back.
5. Trim the extra piece of paper off the end of your small triangle.
6. Around the outside of your triangle, cut some fun designs -- circles, squares, triangles, squiggles ... anything goes.
7. Unfold your paper and look at your masterpiece.
8. Voila! A snowflake to hang in your window.