Adrian 4 years Adrian 49 - 53 months Holidays PRACTICAL LIFE 🙌🏻 SENSORIAL 🖐️👀👂👅👃

✂️Scissors • ❤️💛💙Primary Colors 🍝Pasta Cutting Activity

How about the primary colors pasta ✂️cutting activity! Reinforce the concept of the three primary colors: ❤️red, 💛yellow and blue while offering your child to exercise fine motor skills by cutting with scissors.

How to make this activity:

cook pasta as directed (we had some old pasta that was past due its expiration date),
once the pasta is cooked, rinse it with cold water to prevent further cooking,
divide pasta into three piles and place into separate ziplock bags,
add red, yellow and green food coloring to each ziplock bag and mix,
once mixed, lay colored pasta out to dry just enough that the color absorbs and does not stain the fingers,
*make sure you offer your child to cut the pasta before it dries completely as it will harden, making it almost impossible to cut.

Proper Scissors Grip Trick: when I first taught Adrian to use scissors, I offered him to say, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Scissors!” and asked him to pick up the scissors as if he was offering to shake my hand. Also, note that a child must rely on his/her non-dominant hand to stabilize the object s/he is cutting while the dominant hand uses the scissors, so frequent practice will improve the non-dominant's hand coordination.

Like the proper pencil grip, the proper scissors grip must be actively taught since it is completely unlike any other grip your child is used to. Most children explore with their hands and palms facing downward, or they default to holding small items with the pincer grip (with their thumb and pointer finger). The proper scissors grip, on the other hand, requires a child to rotate his/her hand so that the thumb faces upward and the pinky finger points at the floor. Then, he must spread his thumb and pointer finger as far apart as possible while using his palm to help stabilize the scissors.

Offer your child as many opportunities for cutting until the proper grip is automatic since little ones might find cutting to be a challenging skill which will only become comfortable with frequent practice. And reinforce the practice with constant verbal reminders of how to move fingers when using scissors since, otherwise, a child will likely revert to an incorrect grip (or to use both hands to open and close the blades of the scissors) which will allow cutting but without any precision or efficiency. So, offer various enticing scissors cutting activities to promote practice and be persistent and consistent in reinforcing the proper scissors grip.

Once the pasta dries out and can not be cut anymore, put those little 🙌🏻hands to use while practicing fine motor skills by threading! For more on Valentines Inspired activities, see here ❤️Valentine's Inspired Activities for Kids.