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: Composes geometric shapes

Age: 12-15 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 12-15 Months.

Matches block shapes to build a tower of 3-4 blocks

Situations for Observation of Skill

Give the child six or seven cube shaped blocks (any size)

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation needed. If the child does not spontaneously stack the blocks, demonstrate what the child can do. “See if you can build them high.”

Behavior Observed

Children typically will experiment with placing blocks in different ways, including stacking.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Help parents understand the importance of blocks for learning about math concepts such as shapes, number, space, and spatial relationships. Parents can buy inexpensive blocks or make them from boxes of different sizes with the lids taped on.

 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/.