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: Drawing

Age: 27-30 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 27-30 Months.

Starts adding color to drawings

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child with markers and paper.

Elicitation Strategy

Give the child markers or crayons and paper on a small table, where the child can be stable and comfortably reach the paper.

Behavior Observed

The child changes colored markers or crayons to make multicolored pictures.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Early childhood educators and parents can provide opportunities each day to let children experiment with writing, drawing, and painting tools. All help build the child’s fine motor skills and desire to communicate through writing and drawing. Encourage early childhood educators and parents to comment on the child’s work and ask, “What would you like to tell me about your picture?”

 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/.