Snipping

If you have an eye for detail, you may have noticed in the photos of Anjali's haircut (a long time ago, in the life of a toddler): a pair of scissors in her hands. Anjali is using tiny scissors. It began with her desire to join me at the sewing table, cutting fabric and thread. Tentatively and attentively, I let her use the duller of two pair of tiny scissors. As I cut fabric and sewed it, she cut a small piece of fabric I had given her. Very studiously, she cut and cut and cut, until the edge of the fabric had many many tiny cuts in it. Soon she branched out to snipping yarn (what she was doing when I took the picture for the haircut blog post), and then finally to paper. When she snips, she practices at it for a long time, making a pile of shards of paper. She doesn't have an end goal in mind ~ such as, to cut out a picture, only to use the scissors to cut. Once again, I underestimated her ability to handle activities, and believed she needed "safety scissors," or just to wait altogether on using scissors. But she can handle it, and also knows her limits; she has attempted other larger scissors (under my supervision), and didn't feel comfortable with them. So she went back to the tiny orange scissors. And she knows that they are sharp; she has inadvertently poked herself with them and is careful to avoid her fingers.

See all the little snippets of paper littering the floor? She snipped and snipped until the rectangle of paper was more like an oval ~ teensy snip by teensy snip.