DD losing interest in LHTH activity-help!

[jewel7123]

My DD is 4 and we are on unit 5 of LHTH. Yesterday I found 5 images of purses online and printed them on a page for her to cut out to add to her number book. She showed absolutely no interest, so today I found 5 pictures of elephants, thinking maybe it was just the images of purses she found boring. She's refusing to cut the elephants out either! She cut one but then stated she was tired and moved on to coloring. Just wondering if anyone else has had the same problem the higher up in the number book you get? I'm wondering if she thinks cutting out 5 of something is too much and seems overwhelming for her? It's only going to get worse from here, as we go up to 10 in the number book. Any suggestions on how to get her interested again?

Jennifer

[Daisy]

Does it all have to be cut out at once? Can you break the activity up?

Is this a cutting skills activity? If not, then stickers might be an option for the higher numbers.

My disclaimer is that I haven't used LHTH.

[jewel7123]

Hi Daisy,

It is a cutting skills activity, yes. She had no problems when she was cutting out 1, 2, 3 and 4 images but now that we have reached 5 she is resisting for some reason. I guess I could ask her to cut them out one at a time and take a break in between so she doesn't feel overwhelmed.

[krismoose]

Perhaps you could try partly cutting out the items for her? You do the cutting around the main edge, she just has to cut a bit for each item? Or see if she wants to pick the items out herself and you cut some of them out. If she's overwhelmed, that ought to help and just keep her cutting a bit. I found my 4.5yo ds was getting bored with the repetition of the type of counting and letter activities by unit 6, and I was having trouble making them more interesting for him, so we ended up starting LHFHG half-speed. I wanted to keep going with LHTH for my 2.5yo, but she's happy to tag along with ds for the rhymes & other hands-on activities, so we'll be resuming LHTH sometime when dd is 3 or 3.5. Ds will be 5 in a few weeks and we're doing LHFHG full speed now, and everyone is happy...for now...

[Carrie]

Jennifer,

The ladies are giving great suggestions. It's a great idea to break up the cutting activity over 2 sessions or even 2 days if needed. The scissors activities are meant to build muscles needed for writing later. So, it's important to note that cutting can be tiring when the little muscles are not built up yet.

I'm thinking that the LHTH guide also mentions drawing a box around the cut-outs to make the cutting easier. We did this with our own boys and found it to be a lifesaver and made the cutting go faster. It helped me to remember that the goal is muscle strengthening, not perfection in cutting.

One other thing that I know added pizazz was to have the kiddos cut out of a magazine. If you have a Penny's catalog, we usually did our cutting out of that. It helped to cut out different purses (or whatever we were cutting so that each image was different each time they cut).

Blessings,
Carrie

[rni'smommy]

Sometimes with ds I would cut half and he would cut half. It helps for him to work togther with me and it also made it a little less daunting when we got to the bigger numbers. And definitely do the box or circle around the picture it is really difficult even for my 5 yr old to cut details.

[sted]

Just a thought, I know with my 4 year old, some days he is really excited about doing LHTH and others he shows no real interest and would rather just play. I would be flexible at this age and realize that is going to happen. Take a day or two off and let her do something different, then come back to it. I bet the excitement will return. Kids at that age aren't always ready for "school" so just watch your child. Other days, mine's asking if we can read more of the Bible story when I tell him we have to stop. I wouldn't panic. You could always intersperse it with playing a game with her, or colouring, or just free play.

Shannon

[mrsrandolph]

You can also vary those number activities. Some weeks I print an activity from the computer instead of doing the cutting activity. Do a google for "number 5 printables" or "number 5 activities". You can also do "Letter e activities"... HTH

Shannon

[faroutback]

I don't have a suggestion the others sound great. Our ds loves cutting everything he will cut out the picture and then cut it up. Glueing seems to have lost some of its attraction. I just wanted to say thanks for the tips in finding the images to cut out. Our magazines just seemed to be lacking in the items we needed and it seemed to take most of our time just to find some to cut out. Thank you.

[my3sons]

Half the fun for my dc was paging through a magazine and choosing the pictures to cut themselves. We used the Penney's catalog and sometimes an old Cabela's catalog of my dh's. I just opened it to the section that would work, and each time they found something we'd rip out the whole page. With a black Sharpie, I'd put a big square around it, or a circle, and they'd cut that out before finding the next one. Having some time in between the cuttings was important at first, but after awhile, we just made one big pile of the ripped out ones with squares/circles around them, and they'd cut them all in a row. I do think you can break it up over several days if need be, but I'd keep the things being cut out the same as the plans and stress the key idea of how they are related to the Bible story, since that's a nice tie-in that gives it more purpose than just cutting.

In Christ,
Julie

[Kathleen]

My kids were much more excited about cutting out of magazines, too. (If you're in short supply, buy one thing from Cabela's and you'll have them coming out your ears!! ) And, drawing the black line around the object REALLY does help. (I know because I didn't do it until about number 7. ) It made it way easier for my little guy! You'll get to do more cutting when you get to the color pages near the end. Luckily we started getting seed catalogs before we got to those pages. Cabela's is only good for brown, green, and possible orange.

We also got a couple of those folders with prongs in the middle so we could add to their book right away. Maybe it would be more motivating to do the cutting and gluing if your child got to add it to "their" book and "read" it right away/show it off? Mine liked this.

Have fun with LHTH! We just finished it 2 weeks ago and really had a blast and learned a lot!
Kathleen

[Shimmer]

Mine don't really like finding the items in the magazines, but maybe it's because it is a search. We don't get any catalogs. I have some parenting magazines so we can usually find what we need in them, but it takes some effort even with me helping. I might have to try something else.

An alternate idea is to do stickers or stamps for the number items and do a cutting activity on the side. My girls like cutting narrow strips of construction paper down and making collages out of them.