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: 24-27 Months

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Lines blocks up to make

Situations for Observation of Skill

Have small blocks available for the child to play with during playtime.

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation may be needed. If the child does not spontaneously make a train or line the blocks up to make a road or other item, the adult can suggest making a train, snake, road, etc.

Behavior Observed

The child will be able to arrange blocks to make a horizontal figure.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Help parents understand that the home is the child’s familiar space and she is learning spatial understanding by mentally mapping where rooms and items in the house are located. Parents can talk about the rooms and have children find or return items to the various rooms as part of learning to navigate a larger space.

 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/.