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 compare, sort, group, organize and measure objects and create patterns in their everyday environment.

Skill Progression: Comparing and Ordering

Age: 15-18 Months

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Stacks three or four blocks

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child with blocks during playtime with an adult.

Elicitation Strategy

If the child does not spontaneously stack blocks, the adult can model and see if the child imitates.

Behavior Observed

Children are motivated to see how many blocks they can stack. They should stack at least three by this age.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage early childhood educators and parents to play with blocks beside the child. This way, the adult can build simple structures or patterns to stimulate the child’s ideas. Experiment with blocks of different colors and sizes.

 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/.