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 speak audibly and express thoughts, and feelings, and ideas clearly.

Skill Progression: Language production

Age: 4-6 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 4-6 Months.

Says “mama”/”dada” without meaning

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the infant during face-to-face interaction with an adult and during daily routines.

Elicitation Strategy

The adult models saying “mama” and “dada.”

Behavior Observed

The child imitates the adult’s mouth movements and sounds after a pause for the child to process information.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Early childhood educators and parents can stimulate sound production and model mouth movements needed for speech. Parents want the child to say “mama” and “dada,” so modeling these words naturally occurs.

 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/.