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: 36-42 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 36-42 Months.

Uses scissors, snipping with alternating full-finger extension and flexion; holds paper and scissors in thumbs up position

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child with child-sized scissors and a piece of heavy paper.

Elicitation Strategy

Encourage children to cut strips of paper into tickets or money for use in house center or other activities.

Behavior Observed

Child holds materials in one hand and scissors in the other to cut materials with sequential snips.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Note: provide appropriate scissors for children who have established left-handedness.

 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/.