A Craft Book
I have been doing a little more shopping lately, especially looking out for some books for myself. I took Snow White along to a bookshop and she picked up a craft book. It comes with a pair of plastic scissors and basically is about cutting and joining up or glueing the parts/ ends. I do find it a bit tough for a 4 year kid but the end products -if done correctly- can be interesting.
Developing Cutting Skills
I think Snow White wanted the scissors more than her interest in the activities. Anyway, I paid for the book and excitingly, she started working immediately upon reaching home. It was quite a disaster. She could not handle the scissors and kept complaining that she could not cut the paper. But it is quite true, you need to hold correctly before the paper can be cut through. The good thing is this pair of scissors is quite safe, the blades are made of plastic. I had to hold her hands and cut together with her, tough job! By the time we had finished cutting, her patience had run out. I was tired too. She refused to continue with her work and had lost interest. I could not get her attention and so I called it a day. I tried again the very next day, this time, I demonstrated how to piece the different cuttings together, asked her to glue here and there and finally created our product. Snow White was happy.
Subsequently, she tried a few more pages on her own. Each time, she would ask me where to cut, despite telling her numerous times that she must cut along all the dotted lines. Her cutting was not neat. I supposed it must be quite difficult to use that pair of plastic scissors. She even requested for the metal blade type of scissors that we usually use.
You can see from below how the page looks like.
Art and craft page for my kid, taken from the craft book,
I trimmed away some sides for easy handling.
Can you see her cutting skills?
This is the best that she can cut. I think Snow White is afraid of making mistakes. In one of the pages, she actually cut into the picture and was quite upset. So after that experience, she would cut the figures a bit further and not so neat. Think I must give her lots of encouragement.
After cutting, the next instruction is to glue the stripes to the watch. I had to help her by teaching her where to apply the glue. The stripes, however, detached from the watch a lot of times. Maybe the glue was not strong enough. I resorted to stapling instead. Snow White was happy and wore the watch the whole day. My other 2 kids took turns too, be prepared, by the 2nd day, the whole watch came apart. They were too rough with paper products.
The finished products. My 2 kids were wearing them on their wrists.
This page shows us how to make a box.
This page shows us how to make a mobile.
There are many more colourful and interesting pictures in the book that can be made into beautiful items. (Like what you see from above). Right now, I am keeping the book away for a while as I feel that the remaining pictures are too difficult for my kid to cut them out. Instead, I am now drawing pictures or finding a huge picture from magazines and ask her to practise her cutting skills on these pictures instead.
