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 identify and use common shapes and concepts about position during play and other activities.

Skill Progression: Spatial understanding

Age: 36-42 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 36-42 Months.

Builds with blocks in all directions with the intent of make a representation of something

Situations for Observation of Skill

Have a variety of shape blocks. Ask the child what she wants to build. Provide suggestions if needed (e.g., an airport, farm, zoo, town, etc.).

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation needed.

Behavior Observed

The child builds to represent a building, fence, animal, tree, house, etc.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Provide materials to help children move into representational play with their blocks. Add toy cars, trucks, and people to encourage building something to go with the props. Suggest a theme. For example, “You and your friend could make a gas station with a car wash.”

 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/.