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: 18-21 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 18-21 Months.

Stacks 4 small blocks (interest in building tall tower)

Situations for Observation of Skill

During playtime provide small blocks. During clean up use location vocabulary.

Elicitation Strategy

Observe block play. During clean up with the adult, the adult can use location words. For example, “Bring it here and I’ll put it away.” “Put it over there in the basket.” “It goes up on the shelf.”

Behavior Observed

The child will build a tower with four or more blocks.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage parents to involve the child in daily chores. These often involve putting things away in the various rooms of the house, in cupboards or drawers, etc. This not only teaches self-reliance but also spatial understanding.

 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/.