Give your child play-dough to create with. Show her how to squeeze it and pull it apart with her hands. Have her roll the play-dough between her hands to create long snakes. Give her cookie cutters and other kitchen tools to cut out shapes in the play-dough. All of these activities will work the small muscles in her hands that are later needed for cutting. Before moving to cutting paper, offer your child scissors to cut the play-dough. It does not take as much effort to cut the dough, so it will be good practice and a way to transition to cutting paper.
Give your child a pair of small tongs and a muffin tin. Offer several small soft objects like cotton balls or marshmallows. Have your child use the tongs to pick up the objects and drop them into the muffin tin holes. Squeezing the tongs allows your child to practice the same motion he will need to open and close scissors. He will be learning how to control the tongs so that he does not drop the objects, the same way he will need to control scissors using the small muscles in his hand.
Clothespins are another great tool to offer your child for squeezing practice and to develop the hand muscles. Show her how to pinch them to open them and have her hang pictures on a clothesline. Give your child a large bowl or plastic container and several clothespins and ask her to clip the clothespins around the edge of the bowl. Make sure your child is old enough to use the clothespins safely so she does not pinch her fingers as she plays.
Offer your child a bowl of water and then use a medicine dropper to squeeze water up and transfer it from one container to another. Show your child how to dip the dropper into the container and squeeze to pick up some water, then squeeze it out into another bowl. This is another way to practice squeezing and releasing. To make this activity more interesting, provide several bowls of water and drop a few drops of red, blue, and yellow food coloring into each one. Have your child squeeze some water from two of the bowls into a separate container to see what color it makes. For example, if he mixes some blue and red water, it will turn purple.