TEACHING TUESDAY [05.23.23]

Welcome to Teaching Tuesday! If you are new here, I’m a former teacher, have a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction and am now a homeschool mom. You can read more about that journey here.

Every Tuesday I’m going to share an at home learning idea for preschool and elementary age kids, new curriculum resources and a freebie or two!

Cutting is a HARD skill to learn. As adult, we pick up a pair of scissors without even thinking about it to cut something open. To little hands, scissors are awkward to use, they feel weird in their hands and the fine motor skills it requires can be tricky for a 3 or 4 year old.

A great way to introduce cutting, is not by cutting out a whole picture, but by simply making the cutting motions over and over again with a pair of scissors. The picture above shows a very early introduction to scissors. By drawing small lines around the edge of a piece of paper, the child can have success each time they make one cut correctly.

Once the child has mastered this, you could extend the straight line across the page. Then add squiggly or zigzag lines. Last is cutting out an object. They need to have the basic motions of cutting mastered before they can move on to cutting out an entire object.

Here are new resources that I’ve been working on this week!