## 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: 21-24 Months

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### Imitates drawing horizontal, vertical lines, and circular shapes in sand, etc.

Situations for Observation of Skill

During play time have a large tray with sand, cornstarch, or other similar material. Alternatively use pudding!

Elicitation Strategy

After play with the blocks take out the tray with the grain or pudding on it. Take turns making lines and shapes for the other one to imitate. The adult tries horizontal lines (a road), vertical lines (pole), and circles. The adult should imitate what the child does on his turn, too.

Behavior Observed

Using a pointed first finger, the child will imitate the strokes the adult makes.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage parents to let the child experiment with different materials, such as “pudding paint” to practice using her fingers, hands, and fists in different ways. Learning about directionality and how lines can move different ways is an important foundation for reading and writing.

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/.