Consider the different ways the infants and toddlers in your care engage in activities together. Use the information below to learn about various skills within the cognitive development domain and expectations of how infants and toddlers learn the given skills. Reflect on your previous experience and knowledge of child development to document examples of how each age group learns cognitive development skills through play. The Cause & Effect Skill has been completed as an example.
Cognitive Skill: Cause & Effect
Experience/Activity: Building With Blocks
Age range: Birth to 8 months:
Learning Standard: Use simple actions to make things happen.
Expectations: Explores blocks by mouthing, grasping, or hitting them together.
Age range: 6 to 18 months:
Learning Standard: Purposefully combine actions to make things happen.
Expectations: Waits for adult to stack blocks, then knocks the tower over and claps.
Age range: 16 to 36 months:
Learning Standard: Demonstrate understanding that events have a cause; make predictions.
Expectations: Stacks larger blocks on the bottom and smaller blocks on top.
Cognitive Skill: Spatial Awareness
Experience/Activity: Sand Play in the Sensory Table
Age range: Birth to 8 months:
Learning Standard: Explore the properties of an object.
Expectations:
Age range: 6 to 18 months:
Learning Standard: Explore how things fit and move in space.
Expectations:
Age range: 16 to 36 months:
Learning Standard: Demonstrate how things fit together or move in space with increasing accuracy.
Expectations:
Cognitive Skill: Reasoning & Problem Solving
Experience/Activity: Climbing on Mats
Age range: Birth to 8 months:
Learning Standard: Actively use the body to find out about the world.
Expectations:
Age range: 6 to 18 months:
Learning Standard: Use simple strategies to solve problems with support from a caregiver.
Expectations:
Age range: 16 to 36 months:
Learning Standard: Solve problems without having to try every possibility while avoiding solutions that clearly will not work.
Expectations: