## 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 compare, sort, group, organize and measure objects and create patterns in their everyday environment.

#### Skill Progression: Patterning

#### Age: 4-6 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 4-6 Months.

### Recognizes objects by the shape pattern (bottle, cup, ball)

Situations for Observation of Skill

Ball, cup or bottle.

Elicitation Strategy

Place the familiar but different items on the floor around the child and observe what the child does with them.

Behavior Observed

The infant will pick up, explore, and use the novel but familiar items in the same way as his familiar toys. This indicates the infant’s understanding of shape pattern.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Parents often do not know that the simple things they see their child doing, like lifting an unfamiliar cup to their mouth, demonstrates learning. Explain that noticing different kinds of patterns, whether they are physical, tactile, visual, or mental helps us organize the world in a meaningful way. “I do this with things that look like a ball, and something different with an object with a different shape.” As infant’s move from mouthing everything, encourage parents to notice the child’s growing ability to understand different patterns.

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/.