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Thursday 10th September

Good afternoon everyone,

Today we welcomed more new children to nursery. As it was a beautiful day all children enjoyed time outdoors, riding bikes, watering the plants, climbing and exploring.

Indoors some of the children were working on making models and developing their cutting skills, it’s really interesting how children learn to cut, the process involves a lot more than just picking up a pair of scissors and learning how to hold them or open and close them.

Child need to be able to sit up appropriately and have good balance and stability. If a child feels unbalanced, it will make holding the scissors very difficult.

They also need stable shoulders with wrist and finger control, including being able to isolate the thumb and the fingers in order to grasp and release the scissors.

Bilateral coordination, or using both sides of the body together is crucial to cutting. Using both hands together means the dominate hand opens and closes the scissors while the non-dominate hand or “helping hand” hold the paper and rotates it as needed.

If a child is not used to scissors once they have learnt to hold them correctly and open and close them, they may still not ready for paper, so they will practice on playdough

Once a child has mastered opening and closing the scissors, they can move on to making small snips on the paper. They are not moving forward on the paper with scissors, just making snips. This can happen soon after or around the time they begin to open and close the scissors.

However, some children may need more time before introducing the paper. It all depends on their skill level.

Eventually children will be able to make snips on the paper while moving the scissors forward across the paper. The children today produced some marvellous creations.

Have a lovely evening and I hope you are enjoying the nice weather.

Making models and developing scissor skills