ofinemotor

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From Stormie:
Art Learning Center Activity: October Bulletin Board Border:
Give the children strips of orange and yellow construction paper, paste, scissors, and black bulletin board border strips, much like the ones given for the bulletin board project in September. The children simply "snip" off the ends of the orange and yellow strips, then paste them onto their black border strips. Again, you can't appreciate this until it's up and around the bulletin board. (This activity uses the colors of the month.)
Notes:
If this is the first time the class has used scissors for the year, a good group time activity would be to practice holding scissors correctly and going through the motions of cutting. You can even add a little music to "cut" by. This is one of my favorite small motor activities.
I don't know what I'd do without my "teacher helper scissors." If you don't have a pair, get them-they're cheap! If you're not familiar with them, they look like any pair of children's scissors except there's four holes in the top instead of two. The outer holes are meant for your fingers and the inner holes are for the child's fingers. I try never to be without them!

Other October Free Choice "Snipping" options for the Art Center:
>Provide strips of paper in fall colors for children to "snip" then glue onto white leaf shapes
>Provide strips of paper in Halloween colors for children to "snip" then glue onto pumpkin shapes
>Provide strips of paper in black for children to "snip" then glue onto light blue paper for the letter Bb
>Provide strips of paper in black for children to "snip" then glue onto white sheep shapes for the rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"
>Provide paper squares for children to "snip" off the corners and use them in the Art Center in any way they choose
Picking up tiny snips and gluing them onto something is in itself practicing fine motor skills.

Pre-Math and Fine Motor: Place a small container of pre-cut "snips" in the Pre-Math Learning Center along with a set of index cards that have numbers printed on them. To play, a child looks at the number on one of the cards and then puts that many "snips" on the card. (The container of snips can be ones that the children themselves have cut on a day prior to this.)
Alternative: Pre-Math: Have children group the "snips" into sets of "3" (or whatever your number focus is for the month).

Give children a piece of paper with the outline of a square (or your shape of the month) on it and then let them glue their own "snips" onto that outline.

Fine Motor Sprinkling Activity: Allow children to "sprinkle" snips into a box.

From JoAnna Clark:
Theme Borders: For my child-created bulletin board border, I provide the children with sentence strips, stamps and ink pads, or sponges and paint, based on whatever theme we are working on. For October/November, for example, we made borders with several different types of leaves and pumpkins. I also like to use the activity as an opportunity to teach patterns -- "pumpkin-leaf" patterns, "yellow-red-orange" patterns, etc. If desired, the borders can be laminated for extra durability.

Cutting With "Mr. Smiley": When children enter my class who have never had exposure to scissors, it seems that, many times, they hold the scissors upside down and try to cut with their thumb down. I have great success when I take a marker and draw 2 eyes and a smile on their thumb. Then I encourage them to let "Mr. Smiley" watch their face when they are cutting the paper. It works everytime! I even have experienced cutters ask me each day to make a "Mr. Smiley" on their thumbs too!

What a great idea from Wendy Ferguson, Melbourne, Australia:
Hi Stormie, I love your site. I've been reading the "cutting with scissors" ideas and wanted to share a song I sing to the children in my class. It's "Open, Shut Them" with a few word variations. I usually sing it (with actions) before I give the children scissors for the first time (it can be repeated often as a reminder):
Open shut them, open shut them, give a little squeeze
Open shut them, open shut them, cutting is a breeze.
Creep them, creep them, creep them, slowly, slowly up the page
Carefully carefully, open shut them, creep them up the page.
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