Charlie and His Scissors

About a month ago I began handing Charlie a pair of scissors to see what would happen. (Kid scissors of course!) At first he was using two hands to open and shut them, and of course, nothing was cutting because nothing was holding the paper. Finally, he accepted my idea to use one hand to hold the scissors. But holding them perpendicular to the paper still proved to be an issue... So I found myself guiding the paper and righting his hand a lot. For our preschool activities I was even putting my hand in the scissors over his to keep him from veering too far off course... (I still let him do the guiding, opening and shutting unless he was about to cut something in half!)

One day I noticed he had figured out a grip that worked for him to open and shut more carefully. And then, he started cutting in straight lines all by himself... With only about half of the jagged edges as normal. On Thanksgiving morning, he was very hyper, so I distracted him with a pair of scissors and a blue piece of paper. He went at that paper for about an hour, cutting it into ever smaller pieces. At one point he cut out a circle and then held it up to show me... So, it wasn’t a perfect circle, but who cares? Eventually that, too, got snipped into smaller bits. At the end we had one HUGE mess of blue scraps and a giggling little boy that had enjoyed one of the best hours in his memory. Paint brushes and scissors are two of his new best friends!