As one of Roger's Bloggers for Priddy Books, we've already reviewed several lovely books here at The Madhouse. Their latest offering was the fabulous Cutting and Pasting activity book.
These days, if you say cutting and pasting, most people - even kids - will assume you mean something you do on a computer with a mouse, but this book is totally hands-on in the real world, not a virtual one ! It made me feel all nostalgic for the kinds of activity books I used to have as a child and I instinctively knew that it would get a positive response.
The girls - both 6-year-old Juliette and 9-year-old Sophie - were absolutely fascinated and instantly flipped through the pages, looking at the intriguing incomplete pictures and activities. The simple pictures and cheerful, bright colours instantly grabbed their attention.
The book is really well thought out and presented, getting progressively harder and more fiddly as your child progresses. The first pages are great practice at using a pair of scissors to cut neatly and precisely, initially just in straight then slightly curved lines.
Then it moves on to simple geometric shapes - squares, then triangles, then circles. The level of difficulty gets gradually harder and I could see Juliette concentrating really hard on getting a straight cut with her scissors.
She loved completing the simple puzzles, sticking the shapes she'd cut out into the right place to complete the pictures. The perforated pages attached by a ringbound spine make it really easy to pull out the pages as required for cutting, while giving you the choice of pulling out pages as individual worksheets (if you want to use the book with more than one child) or keeping them all together as a sort of home-made picture book. Juliette had a real sense of achievement and kept coming to proudly show me the finished pages.
In the latter part of the book, the activities become even more fun and move away from the school-like cutting practice (that Juliette nevertheless enjoyed). You get to cut out clothes and dress up people ...
or complete cute animal faces, including some small fiddly bits.
Juliette loves being able to work through it all at her own pace and carry out the tasks without needing me to help her read or understand complicated instructions. I often notice she's gone quiet and when I look to see what she's doing, she's sprawled out on the floor in her room with a bin, a pair of rounded-end scissors and a glue stick and she's happily working through the book !
It's a fabulous rainy-day book, perfect for keeping the kids entertained during the long holidays, and I have noticed that Juliette is getting better at cutting more accurately as she gets more and more practice. Learning and improving skills without even noticing while playing is always a good thing ! Top marks for Juliette and top marks for the book too !
star rating : 5/5
RRP : £5.99
for more information : http://www.priddybooks.com/book.aspx?id=6964
Other reviews you may be interested in :
Aah! Think I can feel an investment coming on! Just got my little boy started with safety scissors!!
ReplyDeletepriddy books are fab !!
ReplyDeletethis looks great, my daughter loves sticking, so would be right up her street x
This looks great, I have an 11 yr old, 9 yr old, 8 yr old, 5 and 3 yr old who would fight over this.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great product from priddy books. We have a lot of ther books already and they're fab. You're children look as though they throughly enjoyed using this book.
ReplyDeletemaggieleung222@aol.com