## North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

#### Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Health and Physical Development (HPD)

#### Subdomain: Self-Care

#### Goal: Children develop independence in caring for themselves and their environment.

#### Skill Progression: Eating/drinking

#### Age: 48-54 Months

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

### Holds fork in fingers rather than fist

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child during mealtime.

Elicitation Strategy

Provide a child-sized knife and fork. Serve cooked vegetables or a similar soft meat or fruit.

Behavior Observed

The child curls fingers around the fork and stabs the food.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Rather than offering only one utensil, provide all utensils in a child-sized version and encourage appropriate use. Children learn which utensils are appropriate for which foods and how to combine tools (a fork and knife) by trial-and-error Rather than automatically cutting foods into bite-sized pieces, adults should demonstrate cutting and let the child try.

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/.