## 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 show understanding of numbers and quantities during play and other activities

#### Skill Progression: Composing and decomposing number

#### Age: 54-60 Months

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### Compares sets of objects to find the difference in amount

Situations for Observation of Skill

Have a variety of 10-20 piece puzzles available. Have children work in pairs with children who have lower number concept comprehension using the puzzles with fewer pieces. The adult needs to provide some instruction before doing the activity. Children need to understand the concept of flat and a corner. The adult needs to define and illustrate these concepts before beginning.

Elicitation Strategy

5) How many more pieces are there in the largest group compared to the second largest group?

Behavior Observed

The child can compare groups and use addition to determine size differences.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Parents are not likely to do similar activities, so early childhood educators need to use every opportunity in the day to give children practice with adding to and subtracting from groups or sets. (Total number of coats, number left; single mittens, number needed; total drink cups needed, how many more after 3 set down, etc.)

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/.