To strengthen his fine motor muscle dexterity, we have been doing a lot of cutting lately. This will hopefully help with his pencil grip.
J has been cutting using the Kumon Cutting Workbook. It is very colorful, and encouraging him to continue cutting. Although I don't correct him when he cuts off the lines, this book really keeps him interested to continue to practise to cut following the lines. It is very systematic. It starts with getting children to cut thick straight lines to thin curve lines. J gets to practise cutting straight lines, curve, circle, pentagon, zig zag and animal shapes.
Kumon is expensive, and it is not really necessary to purchase it. You can simply draw straight lines, curves, circle, zig zag lines on paper and let your child cut them. You can also let your child cut out pictures and challenging shapes from magazine. As a working mom, I also don't have so much time to make the worksheets myself. Thus, I went for Kumon instead. I must also admit that I fell in love with the Japanese Kumon method of developing workbooks which introduces learning with an incremental, step-by-step approach. I find that J is attracted to the color and the pictures in Kumon cutting workbook, making it a lot more fun than those I draw for him to cut. Cutting objects from the magazine sometimes frustrates him. The Kumon cutting workbook captures his attention span a lot more. However, my friend YL has no such problem with her daughter cutting from magazines. She did not use Kumon. So every child is different.
I do feel a little guilty though for cutting away such nice and colorful pages, which is a waste. As such, I kept the book for more than a year after cutting only 1 sheet, before finally allowing J to cut it all up! So he started on this book at 4 years old, although I had the book since he was 2 years old.
It takes J on average 5 minutes to cut one sheet, and he could cut 5 sheets or more a session.
Kumon won 2005 Finalist for the Association of Educational Publishers’ Distinguished Achievement Award. You can find Kumon Cutting Workbook from Amazon:
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