Getting Tape

I remember the agonizing process of trying to teach Sparkle how to get tape from a dispenser. Now it was Glitter's turn.

Glitter started getting tape by pulling some off the dispenser and then cutting it off with scissors. So, I decided that it was time to teach her how to get tape properly. Although teaching Glitter to get tape was less agonizing than teaching Sparkle, both girls where exuberant when they finally succeeded.


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Here is a short story from back when Sparkle was four and I tried to teach her to get tape. In this story, I talk to my daughter's hands, and this story has no purpose other than to share an experience that I found amusing ...

We are working on a small craft today, and she, once again, wants to do the taping herself. I've shown her several times how to get tape from the dispenser without ending up with a long, sticky, unusable mess. She's struggling with the dispenser and somehow gotten her arms and hands in a knot. She's frustrated but determined!

I finally convince her to set the tape down, and I ask to talk to her hands. She holds her hands up like little puppets. I look at one hand and explain to it that in "operation get tape", its job is to hold the dispenser still, just so, and nothing else. I ask the hand if it understands. The hand twitches to "glance" at my daughter, then turns back and nods at me.

Next, I look at the other hand, and have another conversation with it explaining what its job is. Again, she pretends that the hand is a separate being from her and has it nod in understanding. I give her the tape dispenser.

She tries again. When her hands start to get tangled again, I gently remind her what each hand should be doing. She straightens out her hands, and laughingly scolds her hands. One hand
scrunches up in her lap. She coaxes her hand back out, telling her hand what to do. After a few more tries, and a few more "conversations with her hands", and several wads of tape in the garbage, she holds a strip of tape that is wondrously not twisted, folded, or scrunched, and she is beaming from ear to ear!
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Of course, Sparkle no problems with getting tape now and makes lots of creations with tape and paper.