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: 30-33 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 30-33 Months.

Snips with scissors on a line across a 1” strip of heavy paper

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child and adult with child-sized scissors and a 1” strip of heavy paper.

Elicitation Strategy

Ask the child to cut across the strip in order to cut the paper in half to make two pieces.

Behavior Observed

The child controls thumb and hand movements to snip on a line.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Early childhood educators and parents can make sewing cards with old greeting cards and a hole-punch. Children can put reinforcers on the holes. Children love hole punches and using the small circles left over for decorations. They can practice drawing skills by decorating their “sewing card.” Give children a shoestring and demonstrate how to sew through the holes. This is great practice for cutting, threading and drawing.

 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/.