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 show understanding of numbers and quantities during play and other activities

Skill Progression: Recognizing number and subitizing

Age: 24-27 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 24-27 Months.

Gives one out of many items

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child during a snack or meal.

Elicitation Strategy

Offer the child a plate with several crackers or other food items and say, “Just take one.”

Behavior Observed

The child is able to take just one. The child may look at the adult, then take more than one the first time. The look at the adult reveals awareness of going against the adult’s wishes. The adult should put the items back on the plate and say, “Just take one.”

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage parents to use the numbers one and two meaningfully in everyday activities. They can request one and one more from the child during the day. They can also count out items as they give them to the child, so the child sees the parent using one-to-one correspondence.

 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/.