The Magic Paper Cutting Trick

Do you hate all of the little pieces of paper that appear whenever your students cut anything out?  Yep - I did too.  That is until I learned the magic paper cutting trick.  Ok, not so much a trick as a sanity saver for someone who hates having little pieces of paper all over her classroom floor.

My bestie taught me this several years ago, and I have been using it ever since.  I teach this to my students at the very beginning of the year in a very dramatic way.  I tell them to watch very closely because I am going to show them a magic trick.  {They get very excited by this.}  I then pick up a piece of paper and a pair of scissors and take my time to cut very carefully around whatever it is I'm cutting.  Once it it all cut out I yell "Ta-Da!!!"  The students then kind of look at me like I'm crazy.  {I'm ok with that.  lol}  I then tell them that my trick is that I cut out my paper with only one piece of scrap.  I then challenge them to show me that they can do a "one scrap cut" too.  Every year, my students are so excited to show me their one piece of paper that they have left after cutting out their project!  It's fun to see them get so excited about something so simple.

I took some pictures yesterday to show you what this looks like in my classroom.  {We were making whirly birds to go along with our weather unit.  I wish I could show you how much fun the students had playing with their whirly birds outside.}



This is what my wonderful recycling box looks like.  Not a tiny piece of paper in the box {or my floor}.  Love it!


Do you do any "magic" tricks in your classroom?