North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Cognitive Development (CD)

Subdomain: Creative Expression

Goal: Children demonstrate self-expression and creativity in a variety of forms and contexts, including play, visual arts, music, drama, and dance.

Skill Progression: Art

Age: 21-24 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 21-24 Months.

Snips with scissors

Situations for Observation of Skill

Provide child-safe small scissors and construction paper.

Elicitation Strategy

Ask the child to make a picture. The adult can ask, “What are you drawing?” When the drawing is complete, the adult can show the child how to snip some fringe around the drawing.

Behavior Observed

The child can open and close the scissors to make a snip, but cannot move the scissors across the paper with repeated cuts.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Rhythmic grasp and release is needed for cutting. This skill develops needed manipulation skills for play, writing, and self-care tasks. Parents are often worried about letting children use scissors. Encourage them to get safe child-size scissors and supervise children’s snipping of tape, paper, and string to give them practice with this skill.

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.