Cutting, like drawing, is a skill that develops as a child’s fine motor skills matures. The more control children have over the scissors in their hands, the more complex their cutting skills become.

 
When children begin to cut with scissors, teach them to hold scissors correctly with their elbows close to their bodies and their hand turned so their thumb is on top.

• At ages 3-4, children can usually cut paper in half in more or less a straight line.
• Between 4-5 years using a pair of scissors, children should be able to cut out a big circle with scissors; and a 10cm square within 0.5cm accuracy.

We practised our cutting as we made some paper snowflakes.

Colour in a circular piece of paper.

Fold the paper into quarters and cut out some shapes along the edges.
To scaffold N, I drew some triangles for him to cut out.

Unfold the paper and you’ve got yourself a cut out snowflake.

 
To make it easier, use stiff paper rather than flimsy paper.

 
Remember ‘thumbs up’ – (hold paper with thumbs up, hold scissors with thumbs up).

 
Keep scissors pointing away from body, not parallel to tummy.

N: 3 years, 9 months.

March 2012

The post Cut Out Snowflakes by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

Rewind a few years. A university lecture hall. The Professor at the front of the hall presents his lecture on teaching children how to read. What is he going on about? Alphabetic principle? Fluency? Initial Phonemes? Segmentation?

There are so many facets to teaching literacy and literature but we must all start with humble beginnings. However, even humble beginnings are complex once deconstructed: vocabulary; background knowledge; alphabetic principle; phonemic awareness (ability to segment words into their separate sounds); comprehension; fluency; sight words; etc.

Let’s start with alphabet letter sounds. Alphabetic principle consists of both alphabet letter naming ability and alphabet letter sound knowledge. Often it is the alphabet letter sound ability that is harder of the two areas for students learn. (Also, these ideas will only use  lower case letters as capital letters only account for about 5% of all letters in the written word.)

Alphabet Letter Sounds: [s] is for Snakes

Simple ideas for introducing the alphabet letter sound [s].

Show children a written alphabet letter lower case [s].

• Model the mouth movement and sound [s].
• Visually connect the picture/word “snake” with the letter sound [s].
• Kinaesthetically move your hand like a slithering snake.

To further support the learning of the alphabet letter sound [s], make some loopy snakes

Draw patterns and stripes all over strong, thin paper.

Cut the paper into strips – some fat, some thin. Cut points at the end of the strips for heads and tails. Put glue under the head and tail.

Bend and stick onto paper. You can overlap the snakes when you stick them down. Finally, stick eyes onto the snakes.

N & M: 3 years, 4 months
September 2011

Looking for more ideas to teach letter sound ideas? Check out our:
[m] is for mixing the wonderfully sweet
[a] is for chocolate fairy apple
[s] is for stars
[e] is for egg

Check out these wonderful online literacy resources:

Primary English Teaching Association Australia
The Balanced Literacy Diet
Playdough to Plato

The post Alphabet Letter Sounds: [s] is for Snakes by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.