## 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: Reach/Grasp/Release

#### Age: 42-48 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 42-48 Months.

### Grasp: Uses static tripod grasp on pencil

Situations for Observation of Skill

Have a piece of paper and a pencil.

Elicitation Strategy

Ask the child to draw or write anything he wants on the paper.

Behavior Observed

The child holds the pencil so that the thumb, index, and middle finger work as a unit to hold the pencil to make marks on paper.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Early childhood educators and parents can provide many opportunities for children to draw. Demonstrate the appropriate pencil grip. Provide a pencil grip to the pencil if the child demonstrates an immature grasp. This can help the child move into a more precise grasp.

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/.