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: 42-48 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 42-48 Months.

Begins cutting on straight line with greater control, producing a smoother cut

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child with child-sized scissors and a paper plate.

Elicitation Strategy

Encourage the child to cut paper plates to make a lion mask by drawing a face in the middle of the plate. Have the child draw lines out from the face and cut on the lines to create the lion’s mane.

Behavior Observed

Child cuts on a straight line with smooth cutting.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Early childhood educators and parents need to provide many opportunities for children to practice scissors skills with art and other materials such as play dough, straws, yarn, etc. Practicing cutting on a line helps develop eye-hand coordination.

 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/.