## 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: Recognizes geometric shapes

#### Age: 36-42 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 36-42 Months.

### Matches familiar shapes of different sizes and orientation

Situations for Observation of Skill

Have a variety of shape blocks. Ask the child what she wants to build. Provide suggestions if needed (e.g., an airport, farm, zoo, town, etc.).

Elicitation Strategy

As you are building say, “I need another one of these (holding up a block shape).“

Behavior Observed

The child matches all simple shapes including a rectangle.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Matching is an important part of learning to categorize objects. Children learn what is alike and different in many ways: color, size, number, shape, etc. Early childhood educators and parents can point out these likenesses and differences in their everyday routines. For example, “This cracker is round and this one is square.” Or use shape cookie cutters to make cookies or sandwiches (real or with play dough).

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/.