Talking about my family

Today in pre-school we got into some really cool arts and crafts stuff, which we could never have done even a few months ago. The most important piece of equipment was...scissors!

How do you teach 'how to use scissors'? I suggest it's nigh on impossible! Every child has an entirely different background in manipulative & motor skills...how do you actually cut things successfully?! Thumb on top? Yes. Chop off fingers of other hand? No! Put them in left hand? OK - of course if that feels right! Cut along the lines? Well, that's the idea but a lot of experimentation is involved!

We were talking a lot about family, what we can/can't do, and recently the girls have been teaching us a Japanese finger chant which gives each finger a member of the family. Our "Finger Bobs" today was an English version of the same thing. We cut, glued and wore a finger family. As you can see, we need lots of fingers :)

Santa's grotto

We've actually stood back a bit and encouraged our little ones to contribute more to the school's Christmas decorations this year. Feels a lot more Christmassy as a result, and we're using up a big stock of cardboard boxes that would otherwise go to waste (Yes - see "Recycling" posting below!)

Jim's Tuesday lads built a colourful snow drift by numbers. We started with some simple origami, then we took turns to throw a dice and cut our patterns accordingly eg 1 - small triangle, 2 - big square etc. After that we used some old plastic sheets to add colour. Pretty fine outcome as you can see, which now decorates the tree in our main room.

Last year we tried to make reindeer, but the antlers were very fiddly/difficult for little fingers to cut with small scissors. Santa has proved to be a lot easier! Here you can see my rowdy boys getting stuck in. They followed simple written instructions on the board (reading is an issue with this class). Apart from a pompom getting chopped off in the cutting-frenzy, the result resembled the plan...we had five unique but recognisable Santas by 5:30 to dangle in the hall!

Stating the obvious, but the girls were a lot more careful and cautious - and were keen to take their trophies home, which was nice. Tana's attempts to build Christmas tree chains proved a lot more succesful than Jim's (fell to bits!) and her class coloured theirs beautifully. We're running out of walls to hang stuff on...only SIX sleeps to the big day now!