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: 48-54 Months

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Horizontal and vertical coordinates used to display relationships (facial and body features, etc.), shows spatial understanding

Situations for Observation of Skill

Give the child paper and crayons or markers.

Elicitation Strategy

Ask the child to draw a picture of anything he wants. When finished, ask the child to, “Tell me about your picture.”

Behavior Observed

The elements of the picture show orientation (sky is up, ground is down) and details within the parts show appropriate spatial relationships as well (head on top, legs on the bottom).

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Early childhood educators and parents should provide time each day for children to draw. Provide a variety of different tools, include crayons, markers, paint, chalk, and pencils for children to use each day. They then will discover the possible different shades, textures, and effects of different media.

 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/.