List of Skills by Age
1-2 Months
Recognizes sounds of parents’ voices
2-4 Months
Starts to categorize and distinguish objects with similar appearance
4-6 Months
Explores with hands and fingers to determine properties of objects
6-8 Months
Uses shape, sound, color, and texture to identify object
8-10 Months
Uses haptic (touch) exploration to determine size, hardness, shape, temperature, and texture
10-12 Months
Uses cross-modal (vision, taste, touch, sound, etc.) approaches to determine object's properties
Categorizes and distinguishes objects by function or behavior
12-15 Months
Places objects into categories (blocks, animals, food)
15-18 Months
18-21 Months
Makes collections of things that are alike in some way (toys with wheels)
Matches familiar objects (picks out socks from shirts)
Groups objects into two groups
Matches animal sounds to animals
21-24 Months
Demonstrates knowledge of basic-level categories (plants, animals, people)
Compares and matches form, size, color
24-27 Months
Beginning to think about how things in the world are alike (rocks, trees, flowers, etc.)
Knows clothing for different occasions
27-30 Months
Thinks many things are alive that are not, but beginning to understand alive and not alive
30-33 Months
Matches pictures of similar objects
Matches colors (red, blue, green, yellow)
33-36 Months
Combines new and previous experience to sort objects by size, type, color, or shape
36-42 Months
Classifies by shape, size, color individually (not two characteristics)
Matches colors (orange, purple, brown, black, pink gray, white)
Makes inferences about which category an item fits into
42-48 Months
Names examples of objects, animals, foods, etc. in a class (e.g., fruits)
Matches a wide range of colors
Knows holidays and related weather or season
48-54 Months
54-60 Months
Identifies the class, when items are named (apple, banana, grape)
Knows penny, nickel, dime (but not their worth)
Classifies toys, tools, number, letters, people, objects by function
 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/.