Seeking Imperfection

When I read that this week's Unplugged Project topic was books, I wasn't sure what to do at first. Paige and I read books together, so that wasn't anything new or different to do this week. So I looked online for ideas to make books, and found several ideas to try in the future. One looked like something really simple to do, called a "Flip Flap Book." Basically, you take a piece of construction paper, fold it in half length wise and then cut a number of slits into one half of the paper to make flaps that can be lifted up to view what is underneath. Paige loves lift the flap books, especially those by Karen Katz so I thought this might be a hit.

In these books, such as the one Paige just got before Easter:

the baby is looking for something. In this case, her Easter eggs. Each page says, "Are they behind the ______?" and you lift the flap to see, "No, that's just a _____" until the last page when you lift the flap to see, "YES! There they are!" Paige and I drag out the Nooooo every time. One time when I was reading it I showed her that NO spells no, and that YES spells yes. Now when I read them I'll point to the yes and no and she'll read that part.

In any event, since this is a popular format, I figured maybe Paige and I could make a flip flap book to look for Ariel. I had her choose what color paper, and then had her work on making cuts to make the flaps. Then she picked different princess stickers to put under each flap, with Ariel being the last one. I numbered the flaps one to four, and under flaps one, two, and three, I put NO. Then under flap four I put YES. So then we read, "Where is Ariel? Is she under the number one? Noooo, that's just Cinderella!" and so on. I would have attempted to take a picture, but Miss Paige decided it was more fun to grab her scissors and cut the book up. I had a few minutes of perfectionism issues, where I wanted to tell her she couldn't, but then I reasoned, why the heck not? She actually seemed to enjoy cutting the "book" more than she actually enjoyed anything else. But she wasn't feeling very good, and the act of mindless cutting seemed to soothe her, and kept he still for awhile. In fact, from it I got the idea to make a "cutting box" for her. I got a plastic bin and put some pieces of different types of paper: wrapping, construction, wax, brown mailing, etc, and told her she could sit and cut what was in the box. She seemed to enjoy it.



Maybe I really do need scissors to be the topic of an Unplugged Project! LOL