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Discovery Cares
Developmental Milestones Guide for Children Ages 6 to 12 months
How Discovery Tracks Development
At Discovery, we track every child using a three-level scale: Just Getting Started means we have not yet seen this skill consistently. Getting There means the skill is emerging or shows sometimes, often with support. Got It means the child shows the skill consistently and independently across more than one setting.
No child is ever labeled behind. Every child is on a continuum, and the only question we are asking is: what does this child need next?
Milestones marked with a ★ are key kindergarten-readiness skills. At 6 to 12 months, no individual milestones are flagged with a star, but this stage lays the neurological groundwork for attachment, language, and attention that every starred skill later depends on. Nothing here is optional.
Each milestone card includes four ways to engage with the skill at home:
1. Approaches to Learning Through Play
This domain covers how your baby engages with new experiences: their curiosity about objects and what they can do with them, how long they stay focused on something interesting, their growing ability to make things happen on purpose, and how they begin to carry what they have learned from one moment to the next.
A 6 to 12 month old who bangs a cup on the high chair tray, drops a toy and watches it fall, or turns an object over to look at every side is conducting a systematic physical investigation. Each action is a test: what does this thing do? What happens when I do that? This multi-mode object exploration is the earliest form of scientific and mathematical reasoning.
- Once a week, offer two objects with very different physical properties: one light and one heavy, one smooth and one textured, one that makes sound and one that does not. Let your baby examine both freely, then narrate the difference: That one is heavy. This one is bumpy. You are providing the language for comparisons your baby is already making physically.
- During every high-chair meal, leave one non-food object on the tray alongside the food. Watch what your baby does with it. The tray is a reliable, captive exploration surface, and the daily rotation of objects builds the habit of investigating whatever is in front of them.
- Each month, introduce one new type of cause-and-effect toy or setup: a pop-up toy, a drum, a light-up button, a flap book with textures inside. The variety of mechanisms your baby encounters builds a broader understanding of how different actions produce different results, which is the conceptual foundation of all later problem-solving.
A 6 to 12 month old who ventures to reach a new toy but checks back with a caregiver first, or who settles into a new space after being held for a moment, is using the secure base in exactly the way development requires. The familiar adult is the launching pad. Without that safety, the exploration does not happen. With it, the baby's world expands steadily.
- When your baby returns to you during exploration, greet them warmly and briefly, then gesture toward what they were exploring: You went over there and found the toy. The narration makes the exploration sequence, venture out, return, venture further, conscious and rewarding.
- Once a week, set up a low-risk novel sensory experience while you sit close: a pan with a small amount of water, a tray of cooked pasta, a container of safe dried beans. Your calm, present, non-directing presence is the safety that makes the messy investigation possible.
- Each month, introduce one social novelty alongside the physical ones: a visit from a familiar relative your baby does not see often, a playdate with one other infant, a class at the library. The social novelty stretches the secure-base exploration skill into the interpersonal domain, which is where it matters most as your baby grows into toddlerhood.
A 6 to 12 month old who sits on a play mat alongside another baby, occasionally glancing over or reaching toward their toy, is in the first stage of peer social development: parallel play with social awareness. They are not yet interacting meaningfully, but they are becoming aware that other small people exist and that their presence is interesting.
- During parallel play, narrate both babies' actions in a calm voice: You are playing with the ring. He is playing with the cup. See each other? The narration introduces your baby to the concept that other people are doing things, which is the social foundation of empathy and cooperation.
- After a playdate, look at a photo of the other baby with your baby and name them. Over many months of this naming practice, your baby begins to store a mental representation of a specific other person, which is the cognitive infrastructure of friendship.
- Each month, vary the social context: one playdate with a familiar peer, one visit to a slightly larger group like a library baby class. The variety of social group sizes builds a flexible social comfort that will serve your baby in the various group settings of toddler and preschool life.
When a baby drops a toy specifically to watch a caregiver pick it up and return it, then drops it again, or presses a button toy and immediately presses it again to replay the sound, they have crossed a major cognitive threshold: they understand that their actions cause specific, predictable results. This intentional cause-and-effect learning is the foundation of all problem-solving and scientific reasoning.
- Play the drop-and-retrieve game deliberately for two to three minutes each day: your baby drops, you retrieve and return, they drop again. Sustaining it through five or six cycles in a row, with enthusiasm on your end, reinforces the intentional nature of the dropping and teaches your baby that intentional communication produces reliable social results.
- Once a week, introduce one new cause-and-effect toy or setup your baby has not seen before. After one demonstration, step back and let them try to reproduce the effect. Your restraint gives them the space to discover the action-result relationship independently, which is far more developmentally powerful than repeated demonstration.
- Each month, increase the complexity of the required action by one step: from a single press to a press-and-hold, from shaking to shaking-in-a-specific-direction, from pushing to pushing-at-a-specific-angle. The graduated complexity is what develops intentional problem-solving rather than simple button-pressing.
When a baby waves bye-bye to a new person because they learned to wave in a familiar goodbye context, or claps when something good happens because they learned clapping from a song, they are demonstrating transfer of a learned action: they have stored the behavior and can retrieve it in a new but related situation. This is the earliest form of generalized learning.
- Once a week, introduce one new simple gesture through repeated modeling: patting your head, touching your nose, blowing a kiss. Do it across three or four contexts over several days. When your baby begins to reproduce it in any context, the generalization has happened.
- When your baby spontaneously uses a learned gesture in a new context, respond with strong positive acknowledgment: You waved at the dog! You know how to wave! That named, enthusiastic response connects the gesture to social reward and reinforces the generalization habit.
- Each month, build one new gesture-plus-sound combination: wave and say bye-bye, clap and say yay, shake head and say no. The pairing of physical gesture with its linguistic label builds the earliest form of word learning: the association between a consistent sound and its meaning.
2. Social and Emotional Development
At 6 to 12 months, social and emotional development accelerates dramatically. Your baby is forming deep attachments to specific people, showing emotion with more specificity and range, beginning to seek comfort from familiar adults when distressed, and starting to show the earliest signs of awareness that other people have intentions and feelings.
A 6 to 12 month old who shows clear delight at a favorite toy, distinct frustration when something is out of reach, and wariness when a stranger approaches is demonstrating differentiated emotional expression: they are not just crying or content, they are registering a range of specific emotional states. Looking to a familiar caregiver when distressed is the secure attachment behavior that makes all this exploration safe.
- Throughout each day, mirror your baby's emotional expressions back to them in slightly modulated form: if they are excited, match the energy with a smile and a raised voice; if they are fussy, lower your voice and slow your movements. The attunement, matching their emotional state and then gently modulating it, is the co-regulation that teaches self-regulation over time.
- Once a week, introduce a mild novelty, a new face, a new sound, a new object, and watch how your baby manages it: do they look to you? Freeze? Move toward? Move away? Their strategy for handling mild novelty tells you about their emotional regulation resources and their secure attachment.
- Each month, take note of the range of emotions your baby expressed that week. A growing list, from two or three early on to six or eight by twelve months, is a developmental indicator worth tracking. It is the most direct evidence that your baby's emotional life is becoming richer and more differentiated.
By 6 to 12 months, most babies show clear preference for specific familiar caregivers: they brighten when that person enters the room, calm more readily when held by them, protest more loudly when that person leaves, and may show stranger wariness that is absent with familiar people. This selective attachment is not clinginess: it is the healthy development of the secure relationships that everything else builds on.
- When you leave your baby's sight, even briefly, narrate it and your return: I am going to get your milk. I will be right back. Then return within the stated timeframe consistently. Over months, the reliable return builds the trust that allows your baby to manage separations with less distress.
- Accept and respond warmly to stranger wariness without forcing interactions. When your baby clings during a social introduction, narrate calmly: You are not sure about this person yet. That is okay. We will stay close. The validation of the wariness, rather than overriding it, is what allows it to resolve naturally.
- Each month, build one new shared ritual into your routine: a specific morning greeting, a particular bedtime song, a special bath-time game. These rituals are the relational anchors that make the attachment relationship specific and irreplaceable, which is exactly what healthy attachment requires.
A baby who raises arms to be picked up, points toward something interesting, or waves bye-bye is using intentional gestural communication: they have learned that specific physical acts produce specific social responses. Pointing in particular is one of the most significant communicative milestones of the first year, because it is the first act of deliberately directing another person's attention toward something in the shared world.
- Model pointing throughout the day: point at the dog, at a bird outside the window, at something interesting on a walk. Use the same clear pointing gesture each time. Your consistent use of pointing models the social-communicative function of the gesture and gives your baby the template for using it themselves.
- Once a week, set up a joint attention moment: hold a novel object just out of reach, look at it, and comment on it without handing it over. Watch whether your baby looks at what you are looking at rather than just at your face. Following a caregiver's gaze and attention is the foundational joint attention skill.
- Each month, add one new gesture to your repertoire alongside the responses you make to your baby's: show me where, blow a kiss, shake head no, nod yes. The gradual expansion of the shared gestural vocabulary builds the pre-linguistic communication system that supports the explosion of language that begins around twelve months.
When a baby protests with cries or reaching when a toy is taken, or fusses when a desired object is out of reach, they are doing something more sophisticated than random distress: they are expressing a specific emotional response to a specific social situation. This is the earliest form of conflict-related emotional expression, and it is the developmental foundation of later conflict resolution skills.
- When your baby protests during a conflict, stay calm and narrate: You really wanted that toy. Someone else has it. Let us find another one. The calm narration provides both the emotional acknowledgment and the social modeling of how conflict gets addressed.
- After a conflict moment has passed and your baby is settled, return to warm, engaged interaction quickly and without making the conflict a lingering topic. The quick return to connection teaches that conflicts are temporary and that the relationship is stable despite them.
- Each month, note whether your baby's protest behavior is becoming more communicative and less purely physical: more vocalizing and reaching toward you, less undifferentiated crying. That shift, from physical to communicative protest, is the developmental progression toward the conflict language that toddlerhood requires.
3. Language and Literacy Development
Language at 6 to 12 months is moving from social vocalization toward intentional communication: babbling with rising and falling intonation, using first words or consistent sound-labels, responding to their own name, pointing at pictures in books, and beginning to understand that sounds and words refer to specific things. Every conversation and reading session now is building the neural networks that language and literacy will run on.
A baby who babbles with the rising and falling pattern of real conversation, who uses consistent sounds for specific things, or who produces a recognizable first word is showing that language is no longer random sound play: it has intention, direction, and emerging meaning. Babbling with sentence-like intonation is the oral rehearsal of the conversational rhythm that speech requires.
- Throughout the day, narrate in short, clear sentences: We are going outside. There is the dog. That is your cup. The consistent stream of real language directed specifically at your baby is what accelerates the transition from babble to words. Volume of directed speech is the single strongest environmental predictor of language timing.
- Once a week, sit face to face and do nothing but take turns making sounds for five minutes. Match what your baby does, then add one small variation. The deliberate imitation-and-variation practice is how babies hear themselves in another person's voice, which is the feedback that language development requires.
- Each month, count the distinct, consistent sounds your baby uses: sounds they use every time in the same situation for the same purpose. These proto-words, consistent sound-object or sound-situation pairings, are the bridge between babble and real words, and tracking them month by month shows the language readiness timeline clearly.
When a baby turns, pauses, or looks up reliably when their name is called, and when they respond with a pause or a gesture to familiar words like no and bye-bye, they are demonstrating that specific sounds have been linked to specific meanings. This word-to-meaning connection is the listening comprehension foundation that all language learning builds on.
- Practice responding to name as a game: call your baby's name with a big smile from a few feet away, and when they turn, celebrate warmly: You heard your name! That celebration makes the name-response rewarding and motivates the listening habit.
- Once a week, say bye-bye and wave to your baby before leaving a room, and hi when you return. Within weeks, watch whether your baby shows any anticipatory response to bye-bye before you leave. That anticipation is word-to-context learning at work.
- Each month, add one new consistent word-and-action pair to your routine: clap when you say yay, shake your head when you say no, point up when you say up. The regular pairing of a consistent word with a consistent physical action is word learning in its most effective form for this age.
A first word or consistent sign, ba for ball, muh for more, ma for mama, is one of the most celebrated milestones of infancy, and for good reason. It represents the culmination of months of language learning: the baby has stored a word in memory, linked it to a specific referent, and retrieved it intentionally to communicate. This is the beginning of vocabulary.
- Read board books with one object per page and name each object clearly and slowly as you point to it. After a week of daily readings of the same book, point without naming and wait. Any attempt at the label, however approximate, shows word learning has happened.
- Celebrate every word attempt specifically and immediately: You said ball! Ball! and show them the ball. The enthusiastic, specific response to word attempts is what motivates more attempts. Children who have their word attempts celebrated warmly produce more words faster than those whose attempts go unacknowledged.
- Each month, count your baby's consistent words and signs, regardless of adult pronunciation accuracy. Track the list. Most babies have one to three words by nine months and three to ten by twelve months. Watching the list grow month by month is one of the most concrete markers of language development you can observe.
A baby who pats a picture of a dog when it is named, vocalizes at a favorite page, or helps turn the chunky pages of a board book during lap reading is building the print engagement and joint attention skills that early literacy requires. Every positive association with books at this stage is a direct investment in the reading identity that sustains learning through school.
- During every read-aloud, point to pictures and name them slowly and clearly. After a week of daily readings of the same page, try pointing without naming and watch for any vocal or physical response. The shift from passive attendance to active recognition is early literacy comprehension.
- Let your baby handle board books independently on a regular basis. The physical interaction with books, turning pages, feeling the covers, looking at images upside down then right-side up, builds the book-handling habits and print familiarity that formal literacy instruction draws on.
- Each month, add one new board book to your regular rotation and read it daily for the month. At the end of the month, hold it up and watch whether your baby shows any recognition response: reaching, vocalizing, animating. That recognition across many repetitions is the earliest form of the reading comprehension that school literacy requires.
4. Mathematical Thinking and Expression
Mathematical thinking at 6 to 12 months is built from physical exploration: discovering that objects have size, that some things fit inside other things, that containers can be filled and emptied. The concepts of more, all gone, in, out, big, and little are forming through thousands of hands-on interactions. No numbers yet, but the sensory foundation for number sense is being laid in every play session.
A baby who fills a cup with blocks and dumps them out, puts objects into a bin and reaches back in to take them out, or drops toys into a bucket and tips it over is building the mathematical concepts of containment, volume, in and out, and full versus empty through direct physical experience. These physical concepts are what number sense, measurement, and geometry will build on.
- Once a week, offer two containers of clearly different sizes and the same set of objects. Watch whether your baby attempts to put objects in both, and whether they show any reaction when the smaller container is full and objects remain. That reaction is the earliest awareness of quantity-container relationship.
- Each day, narrate one more mathematical property as your baby explores: That block is big. This one is small. That is heavy. This is light. The property vocabulary, heard in the context of physical exploration, is what makes abstract mathematical language concrete and learnable.
- Each month, vary the fill-and-dump materials to build broader sensory mathematical understanding: blocks one month, soft balls the next, cooked pasta in a bowl, water in cups. The variety of materials builds a richer understanding of how different materials fill space differently, which is the sensory foundation of volume and measurement concepts.
A baby who tries to fit a small cup inside a larger one, who attempts to put a lid on a container, or who handles a shape sorter by banging the shapes on the holes is beginning to investigate spatial relationships: which objects fit inside or on top of other objects, and how size determines what is possible. This is spatial and mathematical reasoning in its earliest form.
- Name size relationships throughout the day: The big cup. The little cup. That block is bigger than this one. This one is small enough to fit in your hand. The language of size comparison, paired consistently with the physical objects it describes, is what turns sensory experience into mathematical vocabulary.
- Once a week, sit with your baby and demonstrate nesting three cups together. Then un-nest them and hand them to your baby. Watch what they do. Any attempt to recreate the nested configuration shows spatial problem-solving that goes beyond single-object exploration.
- Each month, introduce one new fitting challenge slightly more demanding than the previous: from two cups to three, from cups to a simple shape sorter with two shapes, from a shape sorter to a container with a lid that requires turning. The graduated spatial complexity is what develops spatial reasoning beyond its current level.
5. Scientific Thinking and Technology
Scientific thinking at 6 to 12 months means investigating how things work: poking, pressing, shaking, opening, closing, and repeating actions to confirm results. The baby is not forming hypotheses yet, but they are building the physical investigation habits and the cause-and-effect understanding that all later scientific reasoning draws from.
A baby who shakes a toy to hear it and shakes it again to confirm the sound, who pokes, turns, and presses the parts of a busy box to see what each one does, or who opens and closes a flap book to explore the surprise inside is conducting a systematic sensory investigation. Each action is a test, and the repetition is hypothesis confirmation. This is the scientific method in its earliest, most physical form.
- After your baby discovers a mechanism, narrate what they found: You pressed that and it made a sound! You opened the flap and found the duck! The narration makes the cause-and-effect finding explicit and pairs the discovery with language, which deepens the learning.
- Once a week, present one object your baby has not seen before and watch the entire investigation sequence: what do they try first? In what order? Do they return to things that worked? Your observational notes on this sequence are the most direct evidence of where their investigative strategy currently sits.
- Each month, introduce one new type of mechanism your baby has not encountered: a zipper, a velcro strip, a pop-up flap, a simple lever. The novel mechanism requires a genuinely new investigation strategy, which builds the adaptive problem-solving capacity that scientific investigation requires.
6. Social Studies Thinking
Social studies development at 6 to 12 months is about learning predictability: understanding that routines follow a reliable sequence, that caregivers respond consistently to specific cues, and that the social and physical world operates in patterns that can be learned and anticipated. These are the cognitive foundations of community understanding.
A baby who lifts their arms as the shirt comes off for bath, who calms when the mealtime position shifts even before the food appears, or who shows excitement when the cleanup song starts at Discovery has internalized a multi-step routine as a predictable sequence. This sequence memory is the cognitive infrastructure that planning, scheduling, and later academic instruction depend on.
- Use a verbal cue at the start of each routine, every time: Bath time. Milk time. Nap time. Now we sleep. The consistent pairing of the same words with the routine start creates a verbal trigger that, over weeks, produces anticipatory responses before the physical routine has begun.
- Once a week, gently break the sequence by one step and observe your baby's response. Does anything in their behavior suggest they were expecting what did not come? Any sign of surprise, searching, or recalibration shows the sequence has been stored accurately enough to produce a prediction.
- Each month, document one routine your baby has internalized by noting specifically where the anticipatory response first appears in the sequence. Over several months, the response point moves earlier and earlier in the routine, showing the sequence memory becoming more complete and more predictive.
A baby who pauses when a caregiver says no gently, who pats softly after being shown gentle hands, or who responds to a redirection during play is demonstrating social responsiveness to adult guidance. This is not obedience: it is the beginning of social learning, the understanding that caregiver signals mean something and that adjusting behavior in response to them produces positive social outcomes.
- When your baby responds appropriately to a redirect, acknowledge it specifically: You stopped when I said that. Good listening. The naming and affirmation of the responsive behavior is what reinforces it as a social skill rather than a reflex.
- Model the behavior you want to redirect your baby toward: show gentle hands with the pet, demonstrate putting the toy down carefully. At this age, behavioral modeling is far more effective than verbal instruction. The visual demonstration gives the baby a clear target to aim for.
- Each month, notice whether your baby's response to familiar guidance cues is becoming faster and more consistent. A baby who responds to gentle no on the third repetition in September responding on the first in November is showing social learning that is developmentally significant, even if it feels like a small step.
7. Creative Thinking and Expression
At 6 to 12 months, creative development is centered in music and movement: responding to rhythm and melody with growing specificity, bouncing and swaying to familiar tunes, and beginning to bang objects in ways that feel deliberately rhythmic. These musical responses are closely connected to language development, emotional regulation, and the auditory pattern processing that phonological awareness draws on.
A baby who bounces when an upbeat song starts, who sways when music plays, who bangs a toy to what seems like the beat, or who stills and listens when a new piece of music begins is demonstrating music responsiveness: their auditory system is processing musical features like tempo, rhythm, and pitch and producing a physical response. This is musical development and auditory brain development happening simultaneously.
- Bounce, sway, or tap your baby's feet to the beat of songs consistently. The physical experience of being held during rhythmic movement, your body providing the beat externally, is what internalizes rhythm before your baby can produce it independently.
- Once a week, try holding your baby during a song and then stopping your movement mid-song. Wait and watch. Does your baby make any movement or sound as if requesting the motion to resume? That anticipation of the continued rhythm is musical memory and expectation forming.
- Each month, introduce one new song with a distinctly different rhythmic feel: a waltz, a march, a lullaby, an upbeat pop song. The variety of rhythmic patterns builds the auditory flexibility that both music and language processing require, and each new pattern your baby's body responds to is evidence of rhythmic learning.
8. Health, Wellness, and Physical Development
Physical development at 6 to 12 months is among the most dramatic of the entire lifespan. In this single window, most babies go from lying to sitting to crawling to pulling to standing to taking first steps. Fine motor skills advance from palmar grasp to pincer grip, enabling entirely new kinds of exploration and self-care. Every physical milestone gained opens a new door for learning.
The progression from crawling to pulling to standing to cruising along furniture surfaces, and eventually to first independent steps, is the gross motor achievement of the first year. Each stage requires and develops increasingly complex coordination, balance, and core strength. Each stage also dramatically expands the baby's exploratory range and the self-directed agency that physical confidence enables.
- During floor time every day, place desired toys at the distance and height that motivates the next motor step. If your baby is crawling, place the toy at standing height. If they are pulling up, place it slightly out of reach to encourage a step. The toy is the motivational engine of gross motor development.
- Do not rush the sequence. A baby who is crawling competently and confidently will pull up when ready. Spending time at each stage building strength and balance before moving to the next produces more confident, stable movement than rushing forward. Watch for readiness signals rather than pushing a timeline.
- Each month, document where your baby is in the crawl-pull-cruise-walk sequence and note one specific physical behavior that tells you they are ready for the next step: belly-down to all-fours, all-fours to sitting-up, pulling up to weight-bearing on both feet. The observation practice gives you accurate information to share at monthly conferences and tracks the physical readiness markers that matter.
Standing while holding a surface, lowering to sit from standing with some control, and eventually taking first independent steps are the balance and strength milestones of the late first year. These achievements require core strength, postural stability, and the sophisticated balance system that upright locomotion demands. They are also among the most emotionally significant milestones for families.
- Once a week, practice sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit transitions together: support your baby as they lower from standing to sitting with control rather than plopping down. The controlled descent builds the eccentric muscle strength that is required for safe, confident standing and is often overlooked in favor of the upward movement.
- When first steps appear, celebrate them specifically and warmly. Then give your baby time to practice the new skill in their own way without rushing toward longer sequences. First steps are wobbly by design: the balance system is calibrating to the new locomotion demands, and every fall is a data point that improves the next attempt.
- Each month, note the specific change in your baby's standing and stepping ability: from two-hand hold to one-hand hold, from one-hand to finger-hold, from finger-hold to momentary free-standing. The progression in hand-support needed tells you exactly where balance development currently sits and what the next milestone is.
The development of the pincer grasp, picking up a small object between thumb and forefinger rather than raking it into the palm, is one of the most significant fine motor milestones of the first year. It requires the brain and hand to work together with precision that was impossible just weeks earlier. The ability to transfer an object from one hand to the other shows bilateral coordination developing alongside pincer control.
- Once a week, offer your baby a toy in their right hand and then offer a second toy within reach. Watch whether they transfer the first toy to their left hand to free the right for the second object. The transfer, however awkward, shows bilateral hand coordination forming.
- Build opportunities for poking and pointing into daily play: books with buttons to press, soft materials with holes or bumps to probe with one finger. The isolated index finger extension that poking requires is both a precursor to pointing and a direct fine motor strengthener.
- Each month, document the refinement of your baby's pincer: from raking, to side pinch, to partial pincer, to full finger-thumb opposition. The progression from one to the next takes weeks and is the most concrete fine motor developmental sequence of the first year. Tracking it gives you accurate information and a clear timeline.
A baby who reaches for and grasps a small toy on the first try, who drops a block accurately into a cup, or who brings two toys together with control is showing eye-hand coordination that is qualitatively more advanced than the swipe-and-hope reaching of earlier months. The eye is now directing the hand, and the hand is responding with increasing precision. This coordination is the root of all fine motor skill.
- Once a week, practice a simple container-and-object game: hold a small container and let your baby drop a block or safe small object into it. The task requires both accurate reach-and-release and the visual targeting of the container opening. Track how many attempts are needed before the block lands inside.
- Build bilateral coordination into daily play: hold two objects and let your baby take one from each hand simultaneously, or let them hold one while examining another with the free hand. The coordinated use of both hands for different tasks is the bilateral skill that tool use, dressing, and writing all draw on.
- Each month, introduce one new grasping challenge slightly more demanding than the previous: from a large rattle to a smaller one, from a smooth surface to a textured one, from an object offered at midline to one offered slightly off-center. The graduated precision demand is what develops eye-hand coordination beyond its current level.
What Comes Next
If your child is consistently showing Got It across most of these milestones, here is what comes next. At Discovery, educators introduce the next stage's skills as soon as a child is ready. No child is ever left unchallenged.
- Walks with increasing coordination and begins to climb onto low furniture
- Uses several consistent words or signs to name familiar people, objects, and actions
- Plays alongside peers with glancing social awareness
- Follows simple one-step directions like bring me the ball
- Imitates counting sounds or joining a counting song with some number words
- Repeats actions on purpose to produce a desired result in new contexts
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