Home Haircuts

Here's a home haircut to sharpen up your scissor skills.

Has someone in your family given you a haircut recently? Have you ever cut someone's hair?

Here's a chance to create a silly haircut and also practise cutting with scissors.

You will need:

• A pair of scissors
• Some pens
• The cardboard tube from inside kitchen roll or wrapping paper OR a paper bag

⚠ And remember to be safe:

• Cut with your scissors pointing away from your body.
• Hold things that you are cutting with 'thumbs up' to keep your thumbs safe.
• Carry scissors with the blades closed and pointing down to the ground (and always walk).

Tube Haircuts

Start by making lots of long, straight cuts along the length of your tube, stopping about 20 cm. before the end. You might want to ask for some help with this bit.

Next, turn your tube around so that the cut strips are at the top and the uncut part is at the bottom. Don't forget to draw a silly face on your tube.

Now your customer is ready for their haircut!

Use your scissors to trim your customer's 'hair' into a style that you like. Take your time over this. You can also blend and curl the cardboard to add extra shape. You are the stylist: have fun with it!



These guys ended up with quite short hair and they look pretty sharp with their new dos!

Paper Bag Haircuts

You can also give a paper bag a haircut.

Start with the open part of the bag at the top. If your bag has handles, cut them off.

Draw a funny face towards the bottom of the bag. Take care to leave a wide gap at the top.

Now, turn the bag around so that the open part is facing towards you. Chop lots of thin strips into the top of the bag. This is your customer's hair.

Time to open your salon and style some hair. Trip the paper strips and don't forget to fold and curl them to add some extra style. 

Now the make-over is finished. They look pretty pleased with their new haircuts!

Learning to Write

We are writers in Autahi.  We all have something to say and ideas to share.  Sometimes though, it's hard to get our ideas down in the written form. If you think about it, in order to write a simple sentence--aside from coming up with the idea--you need to be able to access the sounds that those words make, know which letters makes those sounds, know what those letters look like and then be able to physically make those shapes with your pencil.  There are many skills that you need in order to write a simple sentence. 

We have been working on all of this.  For some of us this is brand new and holding a pencil is a foreign concept, while for others we are consolidating and correcting misconceptions about letters.  

We use Casey the Caterpillar in Autahi to learn about letter formation, letter-sound correspondence and directionality.

This is a cheat sheet for you to see the language we use to make the letter shapes.

This is an excerpt from the story that contextualises the shapes.  The open mouth refers to Casey when she hatches from her egg and is very hungry and ready to eat. 

Every day in Autahi we practise the sounds that the letters make using this song and visuals to guide us. 

We also practise the shapes on our whiteboards.  We draw a tree trunk and branches reminding us of our directionality and size. 

These letters all have tunnels in them.

These letters all have open mouths.

We used the sentence structure "I see a .." which had been in our poem all week and our new knowledge of letter shapes to write our own sentences.  Some of us had a go at the word we could see and some of us drew a picture to show what we could see. 

To support fine motor skills which are essential in writing and needed for simply holding our pencil correctly we have been having lots of challenges around the room.  Here are some of them.

Using small tweezers to sort slippery objects.

Threading buttons and beads onto strings.

Fitting small pegs into holes.

Clipping pegs onto boards.

As you can see writing is multifaceted and requires a number of skills before you can begin to write! 

We are very excited in Autahi to be on our journey strengthening our writing muscles! 

Peace Beads

We are creating peace bead strings.  Everyone that joins the class will make a string and we will create our own hanging mobile.  We have been talking about peace and tranquility and how we want to have a calm and peaceful classroom.  We will be looking into how we can be peacemakers and help to create a wonderful class environment.  Here are some of us and some of our Tautoru friends stringing our beads! Mums and Dads, you can help me finish my string in the mornings if I haven't yet!