## 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: 18-21 Months

You may choose a different domain, go back, or click on a skill below for more information.

### Easy lip closure; no loss of food or drink

Situations for Observation of Skill

Have a snack with the child including water in a small pitcher along with a cup. Have soft and hard snacks in a wrapper or small baggie. Observe the child’s drinking and chewing.

Elicitation Strategy

Ask the child to pour drinks for everyone and serve the snacks. If the snacks are in sealed wrappers, the adult should unseal one end for the child. Enjoy the snacks!

Behavior Observed

When eating and drinking the child has good lip closure.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Involve children in food preparation for meals. Children can help wash food and put it in a container for serving. Encourage early childhood educators and parents to have a small pitcher so the child can help pour and serve drinks. Let children help open packages of food. Children are more interested in eating food they have helped prepare and serve.

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/.