spatial awareness – what is it and how to develop it?

spatial awareness is usually associated with mathematics, or more specifically, with geometry and solid shapes. In reality, this executive function also includes spatial orientation, the ability to reach a destination, and visualizing the arrangement of objects in a room being furnished. Thanks to this ability, we are also able to identify a shorter route, sculpt a specific shape, and correctly assemble everyday objects. What does developing spatial awareness look like?

What is spatial awareness?

spatial awareness is an extremely valuable skill that develops particularly intensively during the first 8 years of a child's life. Even infants are capable of performing simple spatial transformations in their minds. Over time, they perfect their abilities. spatial awareness is considered one of the cognitive functions. People who have developed it can boast excellent spatial orientation, navigation, and visualization of the position of objects relative to one another. This facilitates designing, drawing, interior decorating, and finding the right way to a destination.

spatial awareness has been observed in children as young as 4 months old. Initially, it involves only simple transformations, but it expands over time. This is due to the maturation of the hippocampus and stimulation from the environment. The following section of the article will introduce exercises for spatial awareness in children.

What are the benefits of spatial awareness?

spatial awareness is very useful in everyday life. Not only does it facilitate school and academic education, but it also enables driving a car and using a map. Thanks to it, we manage to reach our destination, for example, an unfamiliar street or neighborhood. spatial awareness also proves useful in artistic endeavors. It is used by painters, sculptors, and photographers.

spatial awareness allows one to:

determine the shapes of individual objects,
assess what is closer and what is further away on the horizon,
plan a route leading to a destination,
drive a car,
plan and execute movements in space while playing sports,
create paintings, sculptures, and photographs,
develop writing skills.

What causes a lack of spatial awareness and how to recognize it?

A lack of spatial awareness hinders not only school education but also daily life. Experts have noticed that girls more often show difficulties in this area than boys. This is likely due to cultural reasons. Girls are encouraged from a young age to develop social skills. Appropriately chosen toys – dolls, teddy bears, miniatures of kitchenware – serve this purpose. In boys, however, spatial awareness is supported. They build objects with blocks, play with cars and airplanes, some models of which they have assembled themselves.

Parents and teachers often unconsciously address boys using language marked by spatial terms, and girls using emotional language. This leads to the development of different competencies. Fortunately, this can be changed by ensuring that girls also exercise their spatial awareness through appropriate games and vocabulary. They are, in fact, capable of acquiring these useful skills to the same extent as boys.

Stereotypes unconsciously translate into the way children are raised. It has been noted that boys are more often told about cause-and-effect relationships, dimensions of objects, their location, and spatial characteristics. These issues are addressed less frequently with girls, but fortunately, this is slowly changing. More and more of them are doing great in mathematics and earning engineering degrees. Everything depends on supporting their natural potential from an early age.

A lack of spatial awareness can be recognized by:

difficulties distinguishing left from right, front from back,
problems recognizing the shape of objects,
irregularities in performing motor tasks, e.g., lifting a leg up,
problems with learning mathematics,
difficulties with drawing, sculpting, etc.,
a lack of skill in planning the placement of individual elements,
problems with writing,
frequently bumping into limbs due to an improper estimation of the size of free space.

A lack of spatial awareness can accompany dyspraxia (clumsy child syndrome). It occurs, among others, in people with ADHD and autism.

Discover exercises to develop spatial awareness

Exercises for spatial awareness bring the best results in the first 8 years of a child's life. However, this does not mean that they cannot be performed at a later age. It is never too late to acquire new skills or refine existing ones. The human brain is famous for its neuroplasticity. This means that new synaptic connections are constantly being formed within it. The more often we repeat a given action, the stronger we reinforce them, learning new things.

There are various exercises for spatial awareness for children. First of all, try to create a space that supports the visual-spatial abilities of a young person. Educational games and toys that are adapted to the child's age and current developmental stage will help with this. Many of them require spatial manipulation and noticing that one object is closer than another.

As a parent, try to familiarize your child with spatial language. Teach them words such as: big, small, round, triangular, rectangular, low, high, folded, twisted, concave, convex, left, right, bottom, top. Try to incorporate them into daily conversations and play. You can, for example, describe various items in a store or animals encountered at the zoo. The more often we use spatially-marked words, the easier it is for us to pick up nuances in the shape and location of objects.

Practice spatial awareness with your child daily. Ask them to place a toy in front of you or behind you. Encourage them to first hop on their left foot and then on their right. You can also play at hiding various items and navigating to find them. The child then learns to use spatial cues.

Exercises for developing spatial awareness that are supported by educational toys bring very good results. Wooden picture dominoes teach not only how to properly match two tiles but also how to name emotions. Knowing them facilitates functioning and communication with other people. Furthermore, the child practices attention concentration, hand-eye coordination, and logical thinking. Maria Montessori always believed that young people learn the most through play.

A left-hemisphere puzzle contains 8 wooden clothing items and clothespins, as well as 12 cards describing their arrangement. This allows for exercising spatial awareness, which the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for. In preschool-aged children, the right hemisphere is developing very well, to which they owe their creativity.

Progressive puzzles feature 5 independent pictures (means of transport). Each of them consists of several elements that the child learns to match in order to make a balloon, a car, or an excavator. This develops their spatial awareness. In our offer, we also have Nature Progressive Puzzles.