## 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: 1-2 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 1-2 Months.

### Reach: Reaches with fist closed

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the infant with an adult and interesting objects.

Elicitation Strategy

Hold objects above the infant within her line of vision and about 8 inches away.

Behavior Observed

Hands are initially flexed, so reach is not effective until the hand opens.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Explain the grasp reflex and how this gives infants the foundation for later voluntary grasp. Help early childhood educators and parents understand the connection between vision and reaching. Children see best at 8-12 inches at this age, so infants are motivated to reach when they see objects at this distance. Stimulating infants to reach gives them practice with coordinating vision, arm, and hand movements.

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/.