North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Cognitive Development (CD)

Subdomain: Scientific Exploration and Knowledge

Goal: Children observe and describe characteristics of living things and the physical world

Skill Progression: Observe and describe characteristics of living things and the physical world

Age: 15-18 Months

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Explores the characteristics of animals, plants (pets the cat, pulls a flower petal)

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child in the back yard or a park.

Elicitation Strategy

Point out the different items in nature and let the child explore them by touching or holding them.

Behavior Observed

The child will touch grass and flowers gently and drop or throw rocks and sticks.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage parents to spend time with their child exploring the outdoors. There are so many sensory experiences, including smells, textures, and sounds of nature for the child to enjoy and learn about. Instill in parents the importance of sensory exploration and learning about seeing what happens when you dig in sand, throw rocks in the water, blow on a dandelion, and so on. These are fun experiences for the whole family.

 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/.