Making the Most of Today: Learning to Use Scissors and Drawing Lines

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Learning to Use Scissors and Drawing Lines

This week Vada's OT, Christy, came to our house to do Vada's six month assessment report. It's crazy to think that we are all getting ready for Vada's annual IEP but more importantly her three year IEP! This is a monumental moment, in my humble opinion. There is even talk of discharge or cutting way back on therapies throughout! Anyway, with Christy, we went through all kinds of different skill testing activities to judge where Vada needed the most help and where her skills were the strongest.

At the beginning of this school year when we were buying my older two girls their school supplies and thinking I was ahead of the game, I picked up these scissors for Vada. However, I forgot all about them since Justin has been working on building the schoolroom. After meeting with Christy this week she brought up the fact that Vada should already be well on her way to knowing how to use scissors.

So im confused.., if Vada should already know how to use scissors and she isn't three, then why does the package say three plus? Is there scissors made for ages three and under and did I somehow miss those ones? Let me just say that these "Preschool" scissors are really hard to use and maybe that is because my hands are five times the size of the handles or im a complete whimp.., but I am seriously thinking of upgrading V to a better pair. Any suggestions?

Yesterday, Vada and I had to go to Peoria for a day filled with doctors appointments. In between appointments V and I spent our time surrounded by books at Barns and Noble. The Barns and Noble in Peoria has a decent Education selection especially compared to ours! I found these Kumon learning books that focuses on specific fine motor skills. The ones that I bought were for cutting and folding which are two of the main areas that Christy and I discussed really working with Vada on. I also found books by Kumon on stickers, tracing, pasting and coloring. Since Cutting and folding is Vada's main area's of needed attention, I decided to not go overboard with all of the other "cool" stuff available!

Vada and I worked on cutting and holding scissors this morning for about twenty minutes. A good start, if I do say so myself.

I did most of the cutting and Vada did most of the watching but she did let me put her hands into the "proper" scissor/hand holding position and several different times too, either i'm not complaining about the work we did or didn't get done. Baby steps are a very important part in the learning process!

After Vada experienced scissors for the first time I decided to work on drawing vertical and horizontal lines with her.

We also worked on other fine motor skills like coloring in the circles that I drew. In the picture below, I colored in the circles to demonstrate what I wanted Vada to do.