Part of Ju's prepping for school is working with his fine motor coordination. He has loved to paint and color since he was 1 and he has been beading with pony beads for the last 4 months. About a year ago, I got him some plastic (yes, even the blades) safety scissors to practice with, but after a few runs, they wouldn't cut anything anymore, so I started letting him use the pink handled kid's scissors that Sheila left here two years ago. Mostly, he would just cut little pieces off the edges of papers and that was interesting for him and I let him make little messes all over. Then they disappeared and he went over a month without cutting anything. This past weekend I bought a new pair of standard kid's school scissors for him and now it seems somewhere in this month of no-cutting-time he has matured to a "cut strait lines through a piece" stage and is now making many paper strips here at my feet.