Trace, Cut and Paste Developmental Learning Activities

A sampling of trace, cut and paste developmental learning activities coming soon to this blog.

       Trace, cut and paste, developmental learning activities are very popular lessons taught inside preschools, kindergartens and early learning centers. In the early learning center where I teach, students complete at least two of these kinds of exercises per week. The reason for this is obvious to those people who have ever observed the fundamental learning that takes place during any primary school’s curriculum. All young students experience some difficulty in developing the levels of obedience, observation and productivity that are required of them in order to be successful in academic environments. These qualities can be developed over a few short years by a loving, patient, and creative team of teachers (or parents) in order for children to be properly prepared for school.

      I have listed below, the preliminary objectives that educators assign to this type of activity. Very young students take at least an entire year or longer to accomplish these agenda. Ordinarily, art teachers would be expected by the State to qualify activities such as these by presuming that goals/objectives would be attainable within one lesson. This expectation is highly unrealistic for three, four and even five year old students. Most young students will not be able to fulfill all of the objectives concurrently until they have practiced them over and over for many months. The ultimate goal of the exercise is: to teach students to perform perfectly together all of the objectives within the context of the assignment, by the end of their kindergarten year, not by the end of the exercise.  

      Below are the objectives for trace, cut and paste assignments that eventually must be performed concurrently:

• Students will learn to listen and follow directions in the order in which they are given.
• Students will learn to recognize shapes and use their correct names.
• Students will learn to recognize colors and to use their correct names.
• Students will learn about spatial relationships and differences between basic shapes.
• Students will learn how to paste elements in an organized fashion in order to create an image.
• Students will learn how to cut simple geometric shapes accurately with scissors.
• Students will learn how to trace around a simple geometric shape while maintaining that shape’s original proportions.
• Students will learn to recognize and act out basic instructional vocabulary.

More Related Content:

• Ages & Stages: Learning to Follow Directions
• Why Colors and Shapes Matter
• Color and Your Daycare Center
• Preschool Key Developmental Indicators (KDIs)
• Shape and Space in Geometry
• The Geometric World of Young Children
• Creating Better Writers with Preschool Tracing Activities
• Effective Vocabulary Instruction by Joan Sedita (PDF)