Why Teaching Toddlers To Tear Is Imporant

Today we worked on tearing paper for our traffic light for letter T. This is a great exercise for toddlers. It isn’t as easy as it looks. Tearing requires strength and endurance in the small muscles in their hands. We kept reminding and modeling how to use their pincher grasp. Just three fingers (thumb, pointer and middle) on both hands are required and that takes a lot of practice. They tend to want to grip and twist. This is an important skill because the children’s non-dominant hand has to assist the dominant hand which will help them when it is time to hold paper as they cut with scissors and when they write with a pencil.

If you want to work with them at home I suggest giving them a bin, box, basket of paper they know they can tear so they don’t start ripping up their books or your important papers. With my Own kids I used our junk mail, scrap paper, and Shoprite flyers.