Child recognizes and develops the ability to explain how material objects change and how they remain stable.
What educators might observe
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Begins to understand death as a biological event
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Begins to understand how the body functions to sustain life
Child uses symbolic thought to represent.
What educators might observe
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Adds details from a scene to its visual representation (e.g., the landscape or the weather)
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Differentiates fantasy from reality
Child develops the ability to store, retrieve, and share information about past experiences.
What educators might observe
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Retells an important life event in sequential order (e.g., draws a picture about something they did during summer vacation)
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Believes that they can remember much more than they really can
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Describes how memory works (e.g., says, “It’s easier to remember something that happened yesterday than something that happened last month.”)
Child becomes a scientific thinker by manipulating objects, asking questions, making observations and predictions, and developing generalizations.
What educators might observe
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Asks “how” things were made (e.g., “How does a pigeon build a nest?”)
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Generates ideas about how to find the answers to their questions (e.g., when wanting to learn more about trucks, the child decides to ask a family member who drives a truck)
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Lists materials needed for an experiment
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Records information from an experience (e.g., drawing, writing, storytelling, photographing)
Child understands and explores the causes and effects of actions and events.
What educators might observe
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Predicts an outcome based on previous effects they have observed (“If we leave the seeds on the top of the dirt, the birds will come eat them.”)
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Seeks but does not readily accept scientific causes for things
Child plans and uses hands, tools, and technology to solve problems with materials.
What educators might observe
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Uses blocks to build stairs
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Sticks with a problem-solving strategy that has been successful before, without considering other alternatives
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Plans how to make a functional object from materials (e.g., a spinning top from Lego pieces)
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Replicates engineering solutions from life in play (e.g., creating a door with a latch for a cardboard house)
Child recognizes some similarities and differences between familiar and unfamiliar people, objects, or experiences.
What educators might observe
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Sorts by a single attribute and reclassifies according to another attribute (e.g., sorts writing implements by type and then re-sorts them by color)
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Arranges 5–10 objects shortest to longest, biggest to smallest, or heaviest to lightest
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Compares number of objects by counting, even when one of the objects is bigger, up to 10
Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.
What educators might observe
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Quickly names the number of objects in groups of five without counting
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Tells what number comes after any number between one and 20
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Explains that numbers tell “how many” of something
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Recognizes and writes numerals 1 through 10
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Divides up to 20 objects between four or five people by dealing out an object to each person
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Uses the words “first,” “second,” “third,” up to and including “tenth” (e.g., says, “I came in fourth” when describing a race with classmates
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Counts on their fingers
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Keeps track of objects that have and have not been counted (e.g., slides objects they have already counted to the side)
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Counts backward from 10 by taking away objects
Child develops the ability to identify, describe, extend, and create patterns.
What educators might observe
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Creates and identifies simple repeating patterns (e.g., draws a pattern of hearts and stars around the edge of their picture)
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Creates and extends simple growing patterns (e.g., stacks one, then two, then three blocks to make a staircase)
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Explains growing patterns such as the pattern of “plus one” in addition (“If I add one, I get the next number.”)
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Describes a “jump, jump, clap” movement as two of something then one of something
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Pays attention to the linguistic patterns in the names of numbers, “Four, forty, and four hundred all sound like four!”
Child understands how objects, points, lines, and shapes fit in space.
What educators might observe
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Correctly uses position words such as “beside,” “under,” and “inside” to describe objects
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Slides, flips and turns pieces to make them fit in a puzzle, but does not always move them in the right direction at first
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Recognizes that there are other shapes that are not common (e.g., rhombus and hexagon)
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Spontaneously creates symmetrical buildings in the block area
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Builds complex bridges with multiple arches, ramps, and stairs at the ends
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Intentionally puts pattern block shapes together to make another shape for a picture
