fine motor invitation: cutting and piggy banks

Or elephant banks in this case. Long strips of paper will often get crammed into the banks, and they usually do not fit. How can we get it to fit? Tearing? Cutting? Folding? All of the above! 

diy paper rainbow clouds

Back during the spring, we had a week of rainbow fun. One of our projects was these paper rainbow clouds.  We used white paper and crepe paper streamers. The children really had a blast!

Materials:
*sturdy white paper
*crepe paper streamers in rainbow colors
*pens
*scissors
*glue sticks

Step 1: Hand out white paper to your kiddos and have them draw a cloud on it. I used 11" X 17" paper cut in half. Each child got a half sheet to draw their cloud on. I encouraged them to draw the cloud as big as they could. Each child had a different approach to cloud drawing as mentioned in this post.

Step 2: Cut around cloud shape for each kiddo if they are on the younger side. The children in my class are three and not many are confident with their scissors skills. I always ask before cutting. One of the children decided to make a rainbow instead and cut it all out on his own. It was awesome. I wish I caught a picture before he put it in his bag to take home. You can see him beginning to draw it in the third picture from the top there.

Step 3: Set out crepe paper, scissors, and glue sticks and have your kiddos add their streamers. The children used scissors to cut their streamers and glue sticks to adhere them to the paper. We had them glue their streamers to the side that had their cloud drawing on it though not everyone did that. It was all good. We talked a lot about rainbow order but it wasn't necessary for the project.

Step 4: Next, add a second sheet of white paper to the back of each rainbowed cloud. Before using your glue stick to adhere the back on, glue a loop of yarn to the top for easier hanging.Carefully trim with scissors taking care to not cut the streamers off (I speak from experience...d' oh!).

impromptu scissors work

 

On the day I had planned for us to begin our sprouting jars I realized I had forgotten to bring tulle to use on our jars. Standing in our classroom kitchen I spied our container of bath scrubbies I had an a-ha! moment and pulled one down. I sat myself down at one of our wee tables and was about to begin cutting when the door opened and the first kiddo of the day walked in. He immediately walked up to me and asked what I was doing. When I told him what I was doing and why he decided he wanted to do it too and so off to the art center he went in search of scissors. He sat there quietly cutting and exploring the plastic mesh for more than 30 minutes. So involved was he that he attracted the attention of another student who wanted to do it as well and so we brought down the scrubbie container and set up a cutting station at the art table. I love it when things like this happen!