Last day of Cutting practice.

Yesterday afternoon was our last day of cutting practice since our library books finally arrived, via my husband, last night after waiting for them for weeks, ( only to have pick up nixed by icy weather). As mentioned in yesterdays post, I cut all our pattern scraps down into hand held size cards, with one pattern per card. I thought that would be easier for the Professors but it ended up being harder and more frustrating for them.

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Getting Started

Professor #2 started out much better, and as I hypothesized did have less frustration with one pattern per card.

For some reason however he felt the need to do this to all the bars he worked so hard to cut out:

sigh

Professor #1 plugged along almost entirely by himself Masha' Allah, but seemed to have grown bored with the activity

That's it for cutting and pasting for us until we begin work on our story extention activities next week. 

Since the Professors start to grow cranky towards our last day of the school week, tomorrows craft activity will be playing with our store bought playdough, so I won't be blogging that ; )

Cutting practice with Circles, Squares, Lines and Triangles.

Yesterday, after a short time off for small colds and a long weekend, we got back to our Cut and Paste Project, Alhumdullilah. To continue with our cutting practice, but to give the Professors a little more guidance and direction, I drew up some simple shape patterns for them to cut out on our leftover paper from last session based on this post:http://www.preschoolplaybook.com/2012/01/taking-home-color-books.html . I didn't take too many photos of the process this time, as I was more concerned with helping them stay on task, and try to follow the patterns.

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The Patterns

I purposely kept the paper large to see how they would go about cutting out the patterns. In the link the teacher cut down the patterns into small squares. We will do this in our next session, insha' Allah.

Getting Started

Professor #3 quickly resorted to ripping to complete the task:

I worked together with him alot to help guide him through cutting the larger patterns, but he wasn't interested and ran off to play action figures, although he was very pleased with this rectangle we cut together, Masha' Allah :

Masha' Allah, Professor #1 did an outstanding job, and got the hang of things very quickly, with very little guidance.

Professor #2 grew quickly frustrated. I feel confusion over the amount of patterns, and how they were drawn on the paper, was confusing to him. Even with alot of help from me, he was just overly irritated. Insha' Allah he'll do much better in our next session with smaller cards, and less print. He gave it a good try though. 

Insha' Allah in our next session we are going to cut the patterns we did not finish in this session. I cut all the patterns down into hand held size cards, and each have one pattern per card. Our Library books are finally  ready for pick up, so insha' Allah very soon we will start our first story extension activity, making a mug of Hot Chocolate. I decided we are just going to cut construction paper marshmallows, instead of gluing on mini marshmallows:

http://www.kiboomu.com/2011/12/27/easy-hot-chocolate-craft/

I really want to do this activity too, but I cannot find the book in the Library System. I'm hoping insha' Allah the Librarian at the Information desk can help us out with finding it, if not we'll just go ahead with the activity:

http://www.kiboomu.com/2011/12/26/alphabet-letter-i-is-for-igloo-craft/



 

Introducing the Glue Stick.

This part of the project did not go at all as planned, but Alhumdullilah, we still accomplished our goal of introducing the glue stick. I had planned that we would use the scraps from yesterday's cutting lesson to glue into collages to practice using the glue sticks. The first, and major distraction for everyone came from the Tree Cutters that were around to cut down some trees in our yard. I knew they were coming, just didn't think it was today. The other distraction for me was Baby Professor, who didn't really want to play in his play area and was pretty fussy about being there.

Getting Started

We did start off on a good note with Professor #1 cutting down a scrap to glue onto his construction paper:

These are the Glue Sticks we used. Fairly smooth, though I don't think I would call it 'disappering.' It was also a little sticky, but not bad at all, and the concept was pretty straight forward and easy to manage for them, Masha' Allah, although the tops were not, even for Mom's!

Professor #2 didn't want to glue once he found out the glue was sticky. He preferred to go back to cutting, even though he asked all night, and all morning when we were going to glue

Professor #3 joined in on his own for a short bit, but was much too distracted by the tree cutting. This was about all he managed.

Once Professor #2 had gotten a good pile of scraps going, I encouraged him to try the glue stick again. After a few explanations he got the idea, and began two collages. However, he just could not understand that you don't need to re glue the pieces once you've glued them on.

Masha' Allah Professor #1 really got into this activity and cut and glued pretty much on his own, except for a minor casualty with the glue stick being turned up too high, then the top being shoved on. 

To encourage the Professors, and brighten up our classroom a little I hung the finished collages in the reading corner, and above the bookshelf. Its encouraged to hang children's art at their eye level rather up high, but I'm not sure how that is going to jive with two curious younger ones around Masha' Allah   ; ) 

Professor #1's collages, and "big red boot" and "waterfall"

Professor #2's collages

Up next week is some formal line cutting, and some shape cutting insha' Allah.

Introducing Safety Scissors

The first step in our Cut and Paste Projects theme is introducing, and getting familiar with, our Safety Scissors. I did not want to give the Professors anything other than whole, blank paper to cut, in order to let them explore freely, and get a feel for how to manipulate the scissors.

 Getting ready to open the scissors. I have to say, Masha' Allah, Safety Scissors have come a long way since I was in school. These scissors don't separate at the handle, so the child only needs to grip the handles and add minimal pressure to cut, and these cut well.

 I

Everyone was pretty excited to get right to work cutting. I didn't get any pictures, or really do a set up, but I divided up a stack of blank, whole, construction paper into three piles for each of them to cut. 

Professor #1 spent a large amount of time cutting down his first piece of black construction paper into a neat pile. 

He then got to work on another piece, and did the exact same thing, but Masha' Allah, after spending almost an hour cutting down his first piece he seemed tired, and didn't cut too much of his second paper

Masha' Allah, Professor #2 also chose a black piece of construction paper, and also spent nearly an hour cutting it into tiny tiny pieces, and into a pile, but focused on the scraps looking like sticks, circles and many other objects I cannot recall, but they all meant something to him. He did not want to cut more than one piece of paper, and spent the rest of the time surveying, and using the vairous objects he made.

Professor #3 was the most unsure about this project. I didn't expect much of him, as he participates at will in our projects. He spent most of his time trying to figure out which way he liked to hold the scissors. In between he took a totally different approach, Masha' Allah cutting each piece of construction paper, very slightly around the bottom or side of each piece before moving to another piece and doing the same thing.

Alhumdullilah, the introduction went well, and we got plenty of scraps to glue tomorrow when  we introduce glue sticks insha' Allah.