North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Language Development and Communication (LDC)

Subdomain: Learning to Communicate

Goal: Children understand communications from others.

Skill Progression: Understand communication from others

Age: 30-33 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 30-33 Months.

Understands basic spatial words (e.g., in, on, out, off)

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child during interactions with the adult during daily routines and play.

Elicitation Strategy

Adults will naturally tell children where objects are located. For example, the adult may say, “Your snack is on the table.” Or “Your shoes are in the box.” If use of location prepositions does not happen spontaneously, prompt the adult to use them.

Behavior Observed

The child understands simple location prepositions.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage parents to describe locations for the child. Prepositions help the child build spatial understanding important to math.

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

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