One of the things they evaluate the kids on is using scissors. Children in our house are not allowed to use scissors. Oops! So after Emmie cut her hair (a few times) and Ellie's baby curls the scissors were confiscated. Obviously Emmie is a pro with scissors but poor Ellie has never been allowed to use them!
For the evaluation they had a piece of paper with a line down the middle and a circle on one side and a square on the other. They had to cut down the line and then cut out the shapes.
First they had to help Ellie hold the scissors and then once she finally cut down the line they let her stop. Apparently it was a pretty excruciating process.
When I heard all this I realized that yep, we never gave that kid scissors at home. She definitely does not have the scissor skills that Emmie has! I definitely thought though that she had more scissor abilities than what she showed the teachers. I was pretty sure she must have been tired that day and just got lazy and didn't give her all. I was wrong.
A few days later I decided we would practice scissors at home. I gave them to Ellie (she was super excited to get to use them) and drew some shapes on paper for her. I was shocked at what I saw! She was holding her scissors sideways instead of up and down and hacking away at the paper. It was pretty painful to watch. I finally (after much coaxing!) convinced her that it would be so much easier if she held her scissors the correct way. (And of course I was right...I used this as a lesson that mom is always right!)
So we've been practicing with scissors and for Valentine's Day she wanted to make her teachers Valentines so I decided to put her scissors skills to the test. I traced a heart on the paper and had her cut it out. Y'all, she did this all by herself! I was beyond proud of her! And even better she was so proud of herself! She couldn't wait to take her Valentines to school and tell her teachers that she cut them out by herself.
I was also so, so proud of her writing. Writing letters was so easy for Emmie because she's very artistic. I never had to really teach her how to make them, she just looked at the letter and copied it on to her paper. Ellie is not so much artistic and so when we worked on letters over the summer she really struggled with writing. Her teachers mentioned in her evaluation that she seemed to enjoy writing and was doing well. I didn't think too much of it until we did those Valentines. I wrote the words on a piece of paper and then she copied it on to her hearts. This summer she struggled with any letters that had curves and any letters where the straight line was on a diagonal (like K and V). I know that her AMAZING improvement (and her excitement about writing) is mostly due to her wonderful classroom teachers and her fabulous Letter Land teacher. They talk so much about how to make letters and do lots of fun activities involving letter formation. (I believe they use Handwriting without Tears.)
When Ellie made her Valentines we all gave her lots of praise for her cutting and writing and I loved seeing how proud she was of herself!
As a side note, she did great on the rest of her evaluation and is definitely ready for kindergarten. She's always helping Emmie with her homework so I knew she was academically ready but I was glad to hear that socially she was ready as well. She's a July birthday so she'll be one of the younger ones in her grade. I think it definitely helps that she has an older sister!
A few days later I decided we would practice scissors at home. I gave them to Ellie (she was super excited to get to use them) and drew some shapes on paper for her. I was shocked at what I saw! She was holding her scissors sideways instead of up and down and hacking away at the paper. It was pretty painful to watch. I finally (after much coaxing!) convinced her that it would be so much easier if she held her scissors the correct way. (And of course I was right...I used this as a lesson that mom is always right!)
So we've been practicing with scissors and for Valentine's Day she wanted to make her teachers Valentines so I decided to put her scissors skills to the test. I traced a heart on the paper and had her cut it out. Y'all, she did this all by herself! I was beyond proud of her! And even better she was so proud of herself! She couldn't wait to take her Valentines to school and tell her teachers that she cut them out by herself.
I was also so, so proud of her writing. Writing letters was so easy for Emmie because she's very artistic. I never had to really teach her how to make them, she just looked at the letter and copied it on to her paper. Ellie is not so much artistic and so when we worked on letters over the summer she really struggled with writing. Her teachers mentioned in her evaluation that she seemed to enjoy writing and was doing well. I didn't think too much of it until we did those Valentines. I wrote the words on a piece of paper and then she copied it on to her hearts. This summer she struggled with any letters that had curves and any letters where the straight line was on a diagonal (like K and V). I know that her AMAZING improvement (and her excitement about writing) is mostly due to her wonderful classroom teachers and her fabulous Letter Land teacher. They talk so much about how to make letters and do lots of fun activities involving letter formation. (I believe they use Handwriting without Tears.)
When Ellie made her Valentines we all gave her lots of praise for her cutting and writing and I loved seeing how proud she was of herself!
As a side note, she did great on the rest of her evaluation and is definitely ready for kindergarten. She's always helping Emmie with her homework so I knew she was academically ready but I was glad to hear that socially she was ready as well. She's a July birthday so she'll be one of the younger ones in her grade. I think it definitely helps that she has an older sister!
Next step in Ellie's education journey...reading! She's been practicing Emmie's high frequency words. The child loves books like nobody else and is so excited to learn to read!
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