SURREY, Jan 8: Geometry plays a crucial role in mathematics, helping us to grasp key properties of 2D and 3D spaces, including aspects like distance, shape, size, and position.
We encounter geometry daily: whether it’s cutting paper for wrapping gifts, determining the area of a room for flooring, or analyzing pie charts and bar graphs at work. Even the act of noticing when a picture is crooked on the wall engages our geometric knowledge.
However, while children in England outperform many other countries in mathematics, their geometry scores fall significantly short compared to their overall math scores. This trend has been consistent for students in both year five (ages nine and ten) and year nine (ages 13-14) since 2015.
Enhancing children’s spatial skills might be part of the solution—something that can be cultivated through enjoyable activities like playing with jigsaw puzzles, toy cars, or construction toys.
Spatial thinking refers to the ability to comprehend the spatial characteristics of objects, such as their size and location, and to visualize objects and scenarios. For example, try to visualize a cube mentally. How many sides does it possess? You’ve just utilized your spatial visualization skills to deduce that.
Research consistently indicates that children proficient in spatial thinking tend to excel in math, and spatial training is proven effective in enhancing mathematical abilities.
Nevertheless, spatial thinking is not a primary focus within schools. The current mathematics curriculum heavily emphasizes numerical skills instead.
For instance, the geometry curriculum presently lacks a focus on visualization. Visualization, the skill of mentally manipulating and imagining spatial information, is foundational to math. Incorporating increased emphasis on spatial thinking could benefit math education across the board—it’s not only essential for geometry but also aids in reading graphs, rearranging formulas, and problem-solving.
In the meantime, parents can facilitate the development of spatial skills at home. Below are some tips for preschool and primary-age children.
Spatial play
While doing a jigsaw puzzle, encourage your child to rotate the piece in their mind instead of physically testing different placements. This leverages their visualization skills.
Your child may have received a craft kit, marble run, or construction set as a gift. These types of toys, which often come with pictorial instructions, necessitate spatial skills for assembly.
Encourage your child to refer to the instructions and then check their creation. This promotes visual memory—the ability to retain an image in mind for a brief period—which is vital for mental math problem-solving.
If your child enjoys playing with dollhouses, toy cars, or farms, discuss concepts of scale with them—like whether a doll’s hat might fit on their head. Challenge them to draw a road for their toy cars, considering the necessary size to accommodate them.
This promotes the development of spatial scaling, a skill that will be useful later when they reason about proportions or fractions.
For preschoolers, simple tasks like sorting teddy bears by size and labeling them as “small,” “medium,” or “large” can lay a strong groundwork for spatial reasoning.
While engaging in play, try incorporating spatial language—terms like “left,” “right,” “between,” “in,” and “above”—into your interactions. When parents use more spatial terminology, children tend to adopt this language too, and those with stronger spatial vocabulary show improved performance in mathematics. Thus, adding these terms to your conversations can significantly aid your child’s math development.
Some spatial terms are more complex than others; for example, “between” may challenge a four-year-old, whereas words like “increase” and “parallel” are better suited for older children. You can use hand gestures to clarify these concepts and give a concrete representation of spatial ideas, helping them visualize what the terms mean.
Encouraging enriching spatial play is an easy and enjoyable way for parents to introduce children to the spatial elements of their environment. Not only will this enhance their spatial and mathematical capabilities, but it will also provide a solid foundation for future academic success, both in school and beyond. (The Conversation). (Agencies)
