Wednesday 24 August 2011

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Montessori Activity: Cutting Magazine Pictures with Scissors/Skæring med Saks/使用剪刀 [shǐ yòng jiǎn dāo]




Idea from my neighbour Yang Li

Age: 2.5 years old

Activity Duration: 5-15 minutes

Objective(s): To train the child’s fine motor skills

Materials:

1. 1 pair of scissors for kids
2. 3-4 pages of magazines with pictures of food, household items, etc.
3. 1 basket to put the cut pictures (optional)
4. 1 tray

Directions:

1. Demonstrate to your child by cutting the out the pictures on a page with the scissors slowly one by one.
2. Then assist your child to hold the scissors with thumb and fingers in the handle himself and have him practice opening and closing the scissors.
3. Hand your child a page from the magazine and encourage him to try cutting.

Additional Information:

J is starting to be bored with cutting papers with scissors, although his scissors skills can still be improved. Thus, I have replaced the papers with pictures from the magazines, so as to bring back some some novelty to this "old" activity. Of course, at this age, don't expect your child to be able to cut out the pictures perfectly, so long as he is having fun.

Updates 10.9.2011 (2Y6M5D):

J asked to cut with scissors today and he worked on this cutting activity for 30 minutes this morning - the longest ever. As he gets older, he has more concentration and spend a longer period of time on an activity, practicing and practicing and practicing, repeating and repeating and repeating, which was really nice.

On a busy day, when I am not so prepared with activities, instead of having to spend time drawing lines for him to cut, it is very easy to just pass him some pages of the advertising papers and scissors. One can't be a perfectionist with Montessori activity, especially for a working mom like me.

Daddy FECS was cutting J hair, while J was cutting the magazine, while sitting on the potty, while mommy got to do other things like blogging... killing 4 birds with 1 stone. One of our best attempts at multi-tasking thus far, but it gets easier with J getting older (2.5 years old) and able to do more things by himself.






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