North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Cognitive Development (CD)

Subdomain: Mathematical Thinking and Expression

Goal: Children compare, sort, group, organize and measure objects and create patterns in their everyday environment.

Skill Progression: Measuring

Age: 21-24 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 21-24 Months.

Explores measuring tools for emptying and filling

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child playing with containers and water or sand (or other small items, such as blocks).

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation is needed.

Behavior Observed

The child will naturally experiment with filling and dumping, usually repeatedly. Having control over making things change in appearance is fun.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage parents to give their child utensils and containers to experiment in the tub. Parents can encourage their child to watch and help as they prepare meals. Have a small creamer pitcher for the child to use for pouring and let the child observe and help as you make servings. Seeing how things start as a whole and are divided up provides a foundation for understanding many math foundations.

 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/.