## North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

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

#### Subdomain: Construction of Knowledge: Thinking and Reasoning

#### Goal: Children demonstrate the ability to think about their own thinking: reasoning, taking perspectives, and making decisions

#### Skill Progression: Thinking and reasoning

#### Age: 48-54 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 48-54 Months.

### Describes reasons for feelings and beliefs

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child during daily activities in the classroom.

Elicitation Strategy

At the end of the day, discuss different situations that occurred. Ask the child to describe what he was thinking when he helped or hurt another child; when he followed the rules or broke the rules; when he did something for a teacher or acted out, etc.

Behavior Observed

Knowing why you do or believe something is a higher level than knowing why you feel something. The child will be able to give reasons for his actions and what he believes are facts or experiences that support his thinking. Note: Reasons may not always be logical to others, but they are logical to the child.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

At this level the child not only knows his feelings and beliefs, he understands a reason for them. This is important to encourage so that children have a rational explanation rather than a subjective feeling for what they believe.

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/.