## 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: Spatial understanding

#### Age: 15-18 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 15-18 Months.

### Turns a familiar picture or book right-side up

Situations for Observation of Skill

During a play session, place toys in a wider area, with some up on a coffee table or shelf, and one of the child’s favorites in another room or center.

Elicitation Strategy

Tell the child her favorite baby (or toy) is in the kitchen.

Behavior Observed

The child walks or crawls from one toy to another. To get the higher toys the child may indicate they want the adult to pick them up. If the adult continues to hold them, the child will say, “Down,” along with body movement.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

As the child becomes more mobile she learns about larger areas of space by physically moving around. Encourage parents to use spatial words with children, such as up, down, on, under, behind, etc. This will help the child learn spatial vocabulary.

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/.