I am loving my pre-k cuties, but it is sooooo hard to change grade levels. People keep telling me, "You taught kinder, so you will be fine in pre-k!" I agree that I may have a slightly better schema for 4 year olds than maybe a fifth grade teacher, but this is hard work!
This isn't my first grade level change. I taught pre-k from 2004 - 2008, then taught second grade from 2008 - 2011, moved to kinder for two years until 2013, and now I am back in pre-k. It's never easy to change grade levels, but one thing that had been the most difficult is adjusting to the need for more time on fine motor practice.
We need a lot of help with scissor practice. I glued google eyes onto ALL of my scissors so that my cuties would learn to hold them so the eyes were looking at them. I am calling then "see me" scissors.
Each day for the past two weeks, I have been incorporating a small fine motor practice/lesson and today we used our "see me" scissors to perform surgery on paper. The goal was not to cut on any lines. It was just to practice a correct grip on the scissors, while pretending we were surgeons. (We used paper from the recycling bin.)
We will get there! I was just so proud of their confidence in cutting after this activity.
