Fall Paper Tearing Activity

Description

Building finger strength and dexterity is easy and fun with these tear art templates. With many options to meet the needs of your students, this paper tearing activity gives young students lots of opportunities to strengthen their fine motor skills and develop independence! Designed with the autumn months in mind (September, October, and November), this set includes 12 fun fall themes.

For each of the themes included in this set, you will find nine print options: three levels of illustration complexity and three styles for writing (no line, a line for a label, and lines for a sentence). As the illustrations become more complex, students may need to navigate tearing smaller pieces and/or using more colors.

Here’s what you’ll find in this Fall Paper Tearing set!

This Tear Art Set for Fall includes torn-paper collage templates for the following themes, with nine print options for each:

▶️ pencil

▶️ apple

▶️ leaves

▶️ acorn

▶️ pumpkin

▶️ bat

▶️ spider

▶️ candy

▶️ owl

▶️ crow

▶️ turkey

▶️ pumpkin pie

How to Use the Fall Paper Tearing Activity:

To get started with this paper tearing activity, students will need a template, construction paper, and glue. Glue sticks work well for this craft, but you can also use white glue with paint brushes.

When teaching young children to make a tear art collage, it’s best to start with a simple template that requires only one color of paper. If there are small details (like the stem and leaf of an apple), you might have the children pre-color those with a crayon. Model tearing paper into very small pieces before beginning to glue.

As children become more experienced with tear art, consider moving to the more complex templates that require smaller pieces and more colors.

How else can I use these tear art templates?

Though designed with paper tearing in mind, these templates can be used in other ways as well!

If you’d like your students to build scissor skills, you can use these templates in a “snipping center.” Provide students with narrow strips of paper and have them snip small pieces to glue onto the templates.

These outlines can also be used at a watercolor center. Inexpensive dollar-store cookie sheets can hold a template, a tray of watercolor paints, and a small cup of water. Students can practice painting in the lines.

These templates can also be used with crayons, markers, colored pencils, or oil pastels!

Why focus on fine motor skills?

Research shows that well-developed fine motor skills in young children are a predictor of academic success. It makes sense that children with dexterity and hand strength would be more successful in a classroom that requires writing and drawing, but researchers have found that the connection goes beyond that.

Through a series of studies using longitudinal data that tracked students from kindergarten through eighth grade, researchers determined that strong fine motor skills in the early years of life help form connections in the brain that lead to greater academic achievement throughout the school years. Unfortunately, advances in technology have led many families away from traditional activities that promote fine motor development. The time that many children spend using computers, tablets, and smartphones is time that they are not spending building, drawing, and manipulating objects in the world around them.

Many children are beginning school with a deficit of motor skills, both gross and fine. It is important for schools to give children many opportunities to build those skills, and this paper tearing activity is a simple way to do that!

If you have any questions, email susan@myhappyplaceteaching.com or use the contact form on this site.

Thank you for shopping!

Susan Jennings (My Happy Place)

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Permission to copy for single classroom use only.

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