As this is A’s last year of pre-K they are working on lots of the skills that they will need for Kindergarten. Three of these skills are cutting with scissors, tracing and writing letters with a pencil, and coloring within the lines.
We are working with A at home to help reinforce the skills he is learning in class, so I set up a little Mason jar system for him:
The jars have cutting with scissors materials, tracing with a pencil materials, and coloring materials.
I honestly wasn’t sure how to work with A on cutting with scissors, so I did some Google searching to make sure I was telling him the right way to use the scissors (and show him because A is left handed, which makes things a bit more difficult). I found a great article from the Parents website, that had lots of tips for helping preschoolers advance their skills.
In the scissor container there are little clothespins, tongs, pompoms (to pick up with the tongs), a hole punch, and two kinds of blunt edge scissors. The only extra materials you would need is paper (for cutting and hole punching), and a paper plate (to put the clothespins on).
The second container is for tracing:
It has pencils and paper letters & numbers I picked up from Target. A can trace inside the letters to work on forming the letters and numbers. I use this app to help guide A on the proper way to draw the letters (there is a method!). It has a decent rating, but there are lots of similar apps out there if you need a refresher on tracing (like I did).
And for his coloring container:
Twistable crayons, googly eyes, and little glasses stickers. The extras outside of the container are coloring books (which if you are like us, you have accumulated a big stack of!). A doesn’t like coloring in coloring books (he likes using blank pieces of paper). Then I saw on Pinterest the idea to use googly eyes, so I am using them as encouragement for coloring in the coloring books.