Snip, snip

Cutting with scissors is a very popular activity these days. We've been at it for close to a month now. Snip, snip, snip they go, creating a snowstorm of paper in my dining room. Not a problem! We just bring the small recycling bin from the kitchen, and sweep everything into it when they're done.

(No, Dries is not cutting in this picture. He had set his scissors down so as to inspect his handiwork, and I seem not to have managed a non-blurry shot of him wielding the scissors. Oops.)

There is very little pride of production in this activity. They don't care at all that it all goes immediately into the recycling bin. They're not making anything: It's all about the process. Cutting, snipping, handling the scissors, seeing the paper fall apart between the blades. Fascinating, and, for the two younger ones, this is the entire point of the activity.

Ada is able to make slices into the edge of a sheet of paper, but she can't yet continue past that first snip. But that's better than when she first started, when all she could do was bend the paper across the blades of the scissors!

It's absorbing work, and doesn't she look like she's enjoying it?

Addie is the one who spearheaded the interest in this new activity. She's the most competent with the scissors, and recently has begun to look for new challenges. Proving her status as the oldest, she's moving beyond process to product. Addie began requesting tape this week, so as to make things with her pieces.

Here, she's just getting used to how the tape works...

But here? This is a FENCE! Or maybe it was a house. Or a house with a fence. She wasn't entirely clear, but what is was not was just a pile of paper scraps left over from a snipping frenzy. No, this was a thing that she built, carefully, consciously, deliberately.

"Scissors" is an activity that can keep them quietly, companionably absorbed for long stretches of time. ('Long' in toddler time, that is, but I'd call 20+ minutes 'long'!) While today they were using a scrap of leftover wrapping paper, generally they're just decimating the junk mail. We pull the recycling bin out from under the kitchen sink full of large pieces of paper, and return it half an hour later filled with teeny pieces of paper.

A few pairs of scissors and some garbage. Doesn't take much to entertain them, really...