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: 48-54 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 48-54 Months.

Begins to cut simple curves and angles

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child with child-sized scissors and a piece of heavy paper, paper plates and other heavy materials.

Elicitation Strategy

Encourage children to cut paper plates to make various art projects such as masks, collages, puzzles, etc.

Behavior Observed

Child begins to rotate paper while cutting around curves and angles.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Early childhood educators and parents need to give children opportunities to cut various angles and curves during art activities. This helps develop their two-handed 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/.