## 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: 4-6 Months

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### Retains one object in each hand

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the infant while seated in a high chair with a tray. Place first one small, safe-size object (such as a block or ping pong ball) on the tray table. After the infant explores the first object, add a second object.

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation needed.

Behavior Observed

During the early phase of this age the child shakes or bangs the object with his arm from the shoulder down. Later, the infant uses the lower arm more and likes to bang objects.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Infants use hands and arms together to manipulate objects. They like to cause objects to move and make noise with gross movements. Encourage parents to buy or make toys and materials the infant can shake (ribbons) or bang (a spoon, or rock, an upside -down lid with a handle) to activate causing something interesting to occur.

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/.