F is for Fire
This alphabet craft was lots of fun to make and involved TONS of fine motor practice as well! Our very first parent/teacher conference with Big Brother’s preschool teacher was on Monday and she indicated that he could use a bit more work with fine motor control. He’s a boy, after all. From my experience as a teacher (and a parent of two boys), it’s rare to find a young boy who doesn’t need extra fine motor practice!
Here’s what you’ll need: Â construction paper (black, blue, red, yellow, and orange), scissors, a glue stick, and a bendy straw.
1. Cut out the letter “F” from a black piece of construction paper.
2. Let your child cut and/or tear the red, yellow, and orange pieces of construction paper. We did a little tearing and A LOT of cutting, since we are trying to work with Big Brother on proficiently using scissors.
Our pile of fire!
3. Working in sections, add some glue (using the glue stick) to the paper. Let your child place the torn/cut pieces onto the glue. Continue until all of the letter “F” is covered.
This part came as a little bit of an after-thought…I wanted to create a “hose” with water spraying on the fire. So I just took a small section of blue construction paper and rolled it up as tightly as I could.
Then I stuck the paper roll into the end of a bendy straw and cut slits in the paper roll. I Â then taped the long part of the straw on the back of the “F”.
Cute, cute, cute! At what age do you think you should “push” (encourage a lot) cutting with scissors? My almost 3 year old is not good at it at all, but also isn’t interested. I keep pulling them out every once in a while, but he gets frustrated quickly. I don’t want it to be a negative experience for him, so I’ve just been putting them back away. At what age do you think I should be more persistent with him using them? Also, (maybe a future post?) do you have some tips on how to introduce cutting and the “progression” of where to start and what to work on from there? Thanks! :)
We didn’t really push it until just recently (last week to be exact). :) Big Brother will be 4 in January. We started out with the Melissa and Doug scissors (that don’t cut anything besides paper) and now we’re attempting to use the real “fiskar” scissors.
And what a great idea for a post on scissor progression! I’ll have to get to working on that! :)
Thank you!!! That make me feel a little better and like we’re not “behind.” :)
Before giving a child a scissors, the chilldren in my care learn to tear paper. Oh what fun and it too is a good fine motor skill. I have snippy scissors that snip the sides of a pice of paper for the little ones. It is a scissors easier to use. There is no right age to start as each child is gifted in some areas and not in others just like adults are. One child may put puzzles together in a flash and be challenged in cutting with scissors. A great way for kids to learn to cut is by cutting play dough. Lakewhore sells scissors just for cutting play dough. Discount School Supplies has the little snippy scissors. Between 3 and 4 years old is when they get really good. 2 year olds love to cut everything up in teeny tiny pieces. I send that home in an envelope. They are so proud! I have been told that many kids can not use a scissors when they start K so it is good to practice this skill often but no pressure.
Great ideas! We also have done lots with tearing in the past. Cutting playdough is lots of fun…even my youngest loves to use the playdough scissors. :)
Cute, I really like the fire hose. We will be doing Firefighters/Fire Safety next week.
Perfect. My son’s preschool sound of the week next week is ‘F’… A great project to reinforce with.
My son Caleb loved cutting straws with his safety scissors. The cut piece of straw tends to bounce off the scissors to the floor. He loved making a mess on the floor and then cleaning the mess was always accompanied with singing the clean up song.