Cutting With A Knife

Yahoo! My youngest learned how to cut with a knife at lunch today!

We had this rare one-on-one lunch together today. My 7 year old went to a friend's house for the afternoon and my 9 year old was off with dad after soccer games doing errands, so my 5 year old and I had lunch alone at home together. So nice. Very special. I really want to try and do it more often...

So, while I reheated homemade pizza from last night, she went out to the garden to pick carrots for lunch. Then she washed them in the sink. I just love that my kids know where much of our food comes from.



When the pizza was ready, she watched me pull it out of the oven to cool a bit and start cutting up the carrots she had picked and washed. She wanted to cut something too. Since she was two-ish, I have been teaching her how to cut with a kids' training knife. Here is a link to what we have if you are interested:

http://www.pamperedchef.com/our_products/catalog/product.jsp?productId=9761&categoryCode=CE

Well, today she wanted to use the steak knife I was using. I thought...she is ready. I started by slicing the pizza into sticks.

I taught her how to hold the fork backwards with her "helper hand" - for her, this is her left, as she writes with her right hand.

I helped her to point her index finger and press at the top of the back of the tines, then stab that stick of pizza!

I helped her correctly hold the steak knife, again with her dominant (writing) hand with the index finger running down the blunt side of the knife.


She sawed back and forth and easily cut through the slice of pizza. I showed her how to use the edge of the knife to get the piece of pizza off the fork, then stab the next section and cut again...

We talked about the fact that I trust her to use a sharp knife responsibly in the way it is supposed to be used because it would dangerous to act unsafe lay with it.

Then she moved on to cutting her slices of cantaloupe.

What a bonding experience. And, boy was she proud of herself!


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