Teaching a child to Cut

To begin the year, children will work through learning appropriate placement of their hands. To help them with this, I will draw little marks on their thumb and middle finger. Effective Teaching of Scissor Skills by Mary Benbow, MS, OTR is my primary resource for beginning this essential skill of a preschooler. Children will begin by cutting up straws. (of course they can attempt to string them and get even more hand/eye coordination plus fine motor skills, perhaps even patterning practice) Children will have numerous opportunities to cut appropriate items such as playing cards and magazine inserts. The thinking is that something sorta stiff is easier to handle than something flimsy like paper that the child will have to lift up with the free hand.

Sometime during our second semester I am going to introduce cutting worksheets. I have used a few of these before, but I am going to see if using a different one each week will be successful. I am using the book by Kumon My First Book of Cutting.