Frightening site...scissors in the hands of a three-year old. It's taken many months to get to this point--many months and LOTS of practice. Teaching Michael to cut was really about teaching him a fine motor skill and in order to to accomplish this goal I turned to the internet for help.
When we first started preschool last August I printed off pages from three different websites: Activityvillage.co.uk, Dltk-kids.com, and Kidslearningstation.com...the last one being my favorite!! Learning to cut is just like learning to write: you start with the very, VERY basics. What was so great about these worksheets from these websites is that there were enough to spend two weeks on straight lines alone. Then we moved on to curved lines and wavy lines for a while before coming right back to straight lines again. We practiced over and over on these worksheets...I just made sure to mix them up and not stay on the same worksheet two days in a row. I even found that if I cut at the same time, he would tend to cut slower and his work would be neater.
Ahhh...if you could only see the lines cut during the first months of school you would really be impressed with these:
We've come a long way from straight, curved, and zig-zag lines. This last week he even cut out a spiral snake from www.education.com. I really liked having him cut out the different shapes that he has been learning. His favorite cutting worksheet, hands down, would have to be making grass. From that day forward I would find him "cutting grass" on every scrap paper he could find at his desk.
After learning to cut shapes out we then turned to worksheets that had him cutting out shapes and glueing them together to build a robot or build a snowman. When you add glue to the project he is really in his element! Using these beginning language skills worksheets I can combine cutting, glueing, AND categorizing. Now that's educational!!
You are such an organized teacher. Good job. I am so haphazard right now. Do you actually follow a lesson plan? I'm just pretty much impressed all around with your schooling thus far. I am *clueless* about systematically teaching the basics. I'm more like, "Hey, let's try this, and oh! this looks fun!"
ReplyDeleteI started out with a general lesson plan I created myself after much research online. I first wrote down the goals that I wanted to accomplish with him and then wrote e-mails to several women who have started their kids at 3 years old. One of them I taught her older child and ALL of her eight other children in school now are SSOO smart! I wanted to do what she does! I took it a little farther from both of the women I wrote, though. They buy the books at Walgreens (I think they're $9.99) and then work through the book that has tracing, alphabet, numbers, colors and shapes in it. They also teach them the Pledge of Allegiance and writing their name. I'm also a scheduler...I LOVE schedules because it makes my life easier...but I do walk into Dollar Tree or Dollar General, find a book along the same lines that we are doing now and I will add it into our schedule...which goes something like this:
ReplyDelete1. Pledge
2. Bible lesson from the book "Leading Little Ones To God"
3. Singing (usually the same Bible songs we do for family devotions)
4. Name writing/tracing
5. Alphabet letter and the verse
6. Color
7. Number
8. Shape
9. Cutting
Then on Wednesday and Thursday I add some kind of beginning phonics worksheet in there after the alphabet practice. This is really just training me since I'll be homeschooling both of them if the Lord wills. Hope that helps.
I only sound organized...you should see the guest bedroom where we do school...hahahaha!