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

#### Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Emotional and Social Development (ESD)

#### Subdomain: Learning About Feelings

#### Goal: Children identify, manage, and express their feelings.

#### Skill Progression: Emotional expression

#### Age: 2-4 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 2-4 Months.

### Smiles with joy in face-to-face interaction

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe child in face-to-face play without a toy and with a toy.

Elicitation Strategy

Have the adult smile and talk to the child in the face-to-face position for a few minutes. Allow the infant to look away occasionally to “regroup.”

Behavior Observed

The infant is now getting great pleasure from face-to-face play. Toy play introduces a new reason to focus and smile.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Stopping face-to-face play or removing a toy after several activations, allows the child to communicate that she misses the engagement. Read any movement or facial expression change as an indication that she misses the toy. Repeat the actions. Soon the child will learn that she can communicate her desires. Parents will also begin to read the baby’s change in facial expression and body language.

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/.