Develop children's spatial skills - how and why.

Good spatial skills are linked to good maths skills which are a better predictor of school success than reading or social-emotional skills.

Ok - so how to encourage good spatial skills in young children?

1. Play with blocks not just for the manipulation of the blocks but also it develops the use of spatial language.

2. Use spatial language eg when asking kids to tidy up, be specific, " put the lego in the box on the toyshelf"

3. Play with jigsaws. Not surprisingly, working out where the pieces go involves alot of rotating and visualisation of how missing pieces might look.

4. Use and create maps. What's more fun than a treasure hunt map? Giving children an idea of how to spatially represented and shown in scale .

5. Encourage children to gesture to show how things move, model objects and point to locations.

Image: Maths Magic Show and other shows with maths, here

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