Monster Haircuts - Scissor Skills Practice • Capturing Parenthood

On Tuesday, we shared some of the best Halloween stories that we’ve read this year. While our list is chock-full of frightfully fun books, our little nugget fell head over heels for one story in particular – Even Monsters Need Haircuts, by Matthew McElligott. When I discover her immediate adoration for a particular book, I usually try to come up with a coinciding craft or activity. So…we turned our dining room into a little barber shop, and let the Monster Haircuts commence!

Our little nugget is obsessed with using scissors. She is constantly asking if she can cut-out her various artistic creations. With her newfound love of scissors, I’ve been looking for lots of different ways to provide her with ample scissor skills practice. A few weeks ago, I came across this adorable hair salon activity that Laura posted over on the @4kids2moms Instagram page. She created a variety of barber shop customers using colored paper, googly eyes, and a marker. She cut long rectangular strips for their hair. Once complete, her kiddos took charge of the scissors, to cut and style each customer’s hair. I thought it was such a spectacular scissor skills activity, that I quickly wrote it down on our to-do list.

When we came home from the library with a book about monsters getting their hair cut, I knew it was the perfect time to break out the scissors!

Monster Haircuts – Scissor Skills Practice

Supplies:

Colored Paper
Black Marker
Googly Eyes
Glue
Scissors
Even Monsters Need Haircuts, by Matthew McElligott (optional)

Instructions:

Cut rectangles out of various pieces of colored paper. We used card stock.
Create your monsters by gluing googly eyes onto the lower half of the rectangles (you want to make sure to leave room for the monster’s hair). Using a black marker, add some monster mouths/teeth.
And now, the important part…the monster hair! Using a black marker, draw hair onto each monster. Make sure to utilize different shapes/designs, in order to promote a variety of different scissor skills.
If you snagged a copy of Even Monsters Need Haircuts, by Matthew McElligott, give it a quick read-through to provide your kiddos with some monster hair-cutting inspiration. 🙂
Hand the monsters (and scissors) to your little ones and instruct them to give each monster the haircut that they requested, by cutting along the black lines. Your monsters will be camera-ready in no time!

Our little nugget was over the moon for this activity, and it kept her completely engaged. She named each and every monster, talked to them throughout their time in the barber’s chair, and proudly debuted each of their crazy and eccentric new hairstyles!