North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Health and Physical Development (HPD)

Subdomain: Motor Development

Goal: Children develop small muscle control and hand-eye coordination to manipulate objects and work with tools.

Skill Progression: Manipulation/Tool use

Age: 21-24 Months

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

Grasps crayon in palm and turns hand thumb up or down

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child with crayons and paper.

Elicitation Strategy

The adult places paper on the table and hands the child a crayon.

Behavior Observed

The child points the sharpened end of the crayon toward the paper to write.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage parents to observe the child with different objects to see how the child changes his grasp to match the use of the tool. The ability to shift approach, even if the grasp is not correct, shows understanding of need for different approaches.

 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/.