What really matters- Expectations about Size- With her increasing use of mental models to set and adjust expectations, Whit is now able to compare two objects mentally, even if they are not in front of her.  She is able to interpret absolute size.  Previously a object far away that looked small was an entirely different object than the one immediately in front of her that looked large. Now she can judge it to be the same object and has a robust mental model of what to expect about the size of things. For example, She can determine that the piece of granola bar that I gave her is not nearly as big (or attractive) as the whole bar she was anticipating.  She gets disappointed, and not willing to be satisfied with something less than she had expected.

How to put it into practice-

Tuning In- There are many instances when we might notice this type of reasoning of whit demonstrating her ability to interpret absolute size.  Here are some examples:

           -Watch for awareness of different sized version of the same item. We had different sized “eebee” dolls around the house and Whit let us know she knew which one was which. Playing with the smaller version in the car, when arriving home  Whit finds the larger version at home and squeals in disappointment that this is the larger one.

           -Whit searches for lost objects where they were last seen and she is better able to match shapes and sizes.

Bridging- A fun game to play with many different types of objects is the behind-the-back hiding game. For example, use a collection of various sized balls and  put the largest ball behind your back, and make it appear again.  One turn you replace the large ball with a markedly smaller ball  and Whit shrieks with delight at this unexpected switch. You can do that with all sorts of objects and help exercise that increasing ability to hold accurate expectations for the size of objects.