Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Emotional and Social Development (ESD)
Subdomain: Learning About Feelings
Goal: Children identify, manage, and express their feelings.
Skill Progression: Emotional expression
Age: 15-18 Months
You may choose a different domain, go back, or click on a skill below for more information.Demonstrates exaggerated facial expression as a game to get a response from an adult
Observe during adult-child playful interactions.
Encourage the adult to engage in “silly” play, dancing, singing, and rough-housing. When the child is excited about performing, introduce funny faces, such as sticking out the tongue, puckering the lips, or making exaggerated emotional expressions.
The child is starting to show off and loves making people laugh. The child will try to imitate the adult’s expressions. This ability demonstrates that the child is gaining the ability to control her behaviors and emotions.
Silliness is fun. Explain to parents how children learn from observation and imitation. Practice involving turn-taking with the face, voice, and body parts supports the child learning to control actions and behaviors.
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/.