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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Discusses what happens to the body after death
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Understands the patterns of the days of the week and the months of the year
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Asks questions about the properties of materials (e.g.,”What is the air made out of?”)
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Talk to family members about their beliefs about death and how they would like to explain death to the child
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Talk to children about the inevitability of the life cycle, and how it applies to everything that is alive
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Observe food as it turns to compost; discuss how it changes
Child uses symbolic thought to represent.
What educators might observe
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Represents specific details from architecture in their constructions
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Plans artistic representation with peers (e.g., child writes a story with friends and then makes puppets and scenery to dramatize the story)
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Experiments with different forms of representation they have learned about through media and trips to cultural institutions (e.g., child attends a field trip to see Balinese shadow puppets and then experiments with creating shadow puppets themselves)
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Invite families to share modes of artistic expression from their family, community, or culture
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Make paper dolls of historical figures; use cloth and scissors to clothe the dolls in historical costumes
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Act out stories that the children write
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Sing songs, such as:
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“I Had a Rooster”
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“The Cat Came Back”
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“The Foolish Frog”
Child develops the ability to store, retrieve, and share information about past experiences.
What educators might observe
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Groups items they have to remember into easy-to-remember categories (e.g., animals, foods, shapes)
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Begins to identify which events happened long ago and which happened in the more recent past
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Starts to make connections between how history has shaped our present experience (e.g., “My friends and I can swim at the same pool because of Martin Luther King, Jr.”)
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Research the histories of the national and cultural groups of the children in the class, and be prepared to weave examples from these groups into discussions of history
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Invite each child to contribute to a timeline of a time period that includes now
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Sing songs that touch on history
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“If I Had a Hammer”
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“If You Meet Me at the Back of the Bus”
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“Fillimiooriay”
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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Seeks scientific solutions that are rational and consistent and that work in similar situations
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Plans simple experiments (e.g., child builds spinning tops and hypothesizes that a wide top will spin for a longer period of time than a flat one)
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Observes changes in living organisms and the natural environment over time (e.g., independently checks corn plants every morning to see how they are growing)
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Works with peers to collaboratively plan experiments
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Compares their observations to those of their peers
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Provide sketchbooks to record natural phenomena, and make predictions; for example, ask children to draw a seed as they plant it, then when it has sprouted, and as a plant growing over time
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Invite children to document their observations in a variety of ways (charts, notes, or graphs, for example)
Child understands and explores the causes and effects of actions and events.
What educators might observe
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Designs experiments that will prove their previously held beliefs about causes, rather than objective experiments
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Describes choices people make based on availability of resources (e.g., talks about how lack of food causes migration)
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Asks questions about how things change over time
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Engage in group conversation about children’s theories of causation
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Analyze choices people made in creating the built environment (e.g. ‘Why did engineers choose to build a vertical lift bridge here?”)
Child plans and uses hands, tools, and technology to solve problems with materials.
What educators might observe
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Uses a second problem-solving strategy if the first one is unsuccessful
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Pays attention to the relevant part of solving a problem (e.g., examines the attachment of the axles and wheels when the toy car won’t roll)
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Uses logic and reasoning to solve problems with materials (e.g., uses their knowledge of how the physical properties of objects affect their behavior and motion)
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Observe and reflect on children’s processes as they solve problems with materials
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Consider which children are most engaged in engineering: Are girls as engaged as boys? Why or why not?
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Invite children to make complex marble runs, taking into account both the angle and length of the ramps
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Offer objects in the environment as models for children’s problem-solving; for example, show them a hinge on a door, or point out how bricks are stacked in a building
Child recognizes some similarities and differences between familiar and unfamiliar people, objects, or experiences.
What educators might observe
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Reverses mental actions (e.g., knows that a ball of clay rolled into a long snake contains the same amount of clay as the ball)
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Chooses a strategy for comparison (e.g., uses graphs to compare their observations of the natural world)
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Understands the need for a standard unit when measuring length
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Offer formats distinctly for comparison and categorization, such as Venn diagrams and three-column charts
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Offer vocabulary such as “traits,” “similar,” and “category”
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Use “greater than” and “less than” to compare quantity
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Compare standard and non-standard units of measure, some of which can be parts of the body; use inches, feet and meters, but also fingers, hands, and items like paper clips
Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.
What educators might observe
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Realizes that the number is unchanged, even when the arrangement looks different (e.g., when counters are spread out, says that there are the same number of counters as when they were together)
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Understands the reversibility of operations (e.g., subtraction is the reverse of addition)
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Uses groups, skip counting, and place value to quickly identify sets shown quickly (“I saw three sets of ten and three sets of two, so the answer is 36.”)
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Uses a mental number line to compare numbers
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Counts forward and backward by ones and using skip counting
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Solves all types of single digit addition and subtraction problems, with flexible strategies and known combinations
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Play more games on a number line (If you start at 12, how many to get to 15? How do you get to 100 from 64?)
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Keep locating math in the body; ask questions like how many fingers in the class?
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Provide base 10 materials to model numbers
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Play “I’m Thinking of a Number” in which children seek clues of what numbers are smaller or larger than the one in mind
Child develops the ability to identify, describe, extend, and create patterns.
What educators might observe
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Skip counts by hundreds, tens, fives, twos
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Identifies the rule needed to extend a pattern or identify a missing number in a pattern (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17)
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Tells time to the nearest five minutes on different types of clocks
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Use materials such as pattern blocks to build growth patterns and describe them (“One hexagon has six sides. How many sides on two hexagons? On three hexagons?”)
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Invite children to observe, copy, and create patterns that grow; for example, make a square out of four cubes, make the square grow to nine cubes, then 16, and describe the pattern with numbers
Child understands how objects, points, lines, and shapes fit in space.
What educators might observe
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Pays attention to the spatial relationships of all the parts of complex figures
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Folds paper squares to make two triangles, folds them again to make more triangles, and describes the process
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Uses simple coordinates to locate a place on a map or a move on a chessboard
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Systematically checks that two shapes are the same by comparing all attributes
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Recognizes and describes situations in which angle knowledge is relevant (e.g., “I need to change the angle to make the car go faster down this ramp.”)
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Invite children to use materials such as clay, straw, and pipe cleaners to construct shapes
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Encourage children to describe why a figure belongs or does not belong to a shape category
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Show children how to “test” right angles on rectangles with a “right-angle checker,” (thumb and index finger held apart at 90°, or the corner of a piece of paper)
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Solve construction problems with blocks
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Build a bridge from point A to point B
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Construct the tallest tower
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Attempt to build buildings observed in the neighborhood
