5 Ways to Develop Spatial Awareness

Spatial awareness is the ability to understand and interact with the environment around you.  Whether it be avoiding obstacles when walking, reaching out to grab a pencil or determining left from right these are all examples of tasks that require spatial awareness.   Developing the skills to express and understand spatial skills are the first step in understanding spatial ability and awareness such as math skills, visual perceptual skills, and body awareness.

Here are 5 activities to help encourage the development of spatial awareness:

1.  Obstacle Courses:  The ability to negotiate an obstacle course requires a significant amount of spatial awareness.  Vary the courses grading them according to the child’s ability to move over, under and around objects.

2.  Build and Create:  Use Legos, blocks, and puzzles.  Try Tangam puzzles.    Try this free visual spatial puzzle crossing paths.  Research has shown that parents who participated in guided block play with their children had significantly higher proportions of spatial talk. Guided block play consisted of playing with the blocks along with guided instructions for how to build different structures.  Read more in a previous blog post on block play and spatial awareness.

3.  Practice completing patterns.  You could try Follow the Path or Patterns, Patterns, Patterns.

4.  Movement Games:  Participate in any type of movement games where children have to move around obstacles or friends.  The ability to move around stationary objects is quite different than around moving objects which are unpredictable.  If you need ideas, try 50 Sensory Motor Activities for Kids!  Check out Which Way? to challenge motor planning and spatial awareness or Right or Left Games to practice right and left discrimination skills.

5.  Provide verbal descriptions.  Offer many opportunities for children to hear descriptions of where they are or where objects are in relationship to each other.  For example – “The pencil is on the right side of the desk” or “Let’s step over the log”.  Play games that require children to follow directions – ie Be A Robot.  Try worksheets where children how to follow directions of what colors to use for different letters or shapes ie Color Coding.

Personal Space Journey is a collection of activities to teach children about personal space. You can choose how to utilize the materials. Some children may benefit from reading the story first with follow up. Others may need to work on body awareness activities in order to maintain personal space.

This collection includes the following:

• Personal Space Journey Board Game
• 24 Body Cards – the child has to make his/her body look exactly like the body on the card
• 24 Challenge Cards – complete the body awareness and motor planning challenges written on each card
• 16 Movement Cards – complete the movement cards to practice body awareness moving through space
• Body in Motion Challenges Worksheet – try to complete the 16 motor skills moving your body in different ways
• Self Portrait – practice drawing a self-portrait and remember to include many body parts
• Color the Body – identify and color in various body parts
• Personal Space Journey Letter for Home – letter written to parents about developing body awareness
• Personal Space and School – a 12-page social story about maintaining personal space in school
• “I Can” Statement Posters to complement the Personal Space social story – 12 “I Can” posters to hang throughout the school to reinforce the personal space journey
• Twelve Small cards of the “I Can” Statements – provide the child with these small cards to remind them to maintain personal space in different situations – i.e. tape to a desk, slip in a notebook, etc.
• Personal Space Journey Certificate – complete this certificate when child has mastered maintaining personal space
• Handwriting Practice – 8 pages of handwriting practice for the child to list ways to maintain personal space in different situations. Provided in dotted line format, double line format (Handwriting Without Tears® style) and regular lined paper.

The activities are reproducible to use over and over again with all the children that you teach.  FIND OUT MORE.

The post 5 Ways to Develop Spatial Awareness appeared first on Your Therapy Source.

Block Play and Spatial Awareness

Developing the skills to express and understand spatial skills are the first step in understanding spatial ability and awareness such as math skills, visual perceptual skills and body awareness.

Child Development published research on the importance of block play in over one hundred preschoolers. The children in the study who were better at copying block patterns were also better at early math skills. Copying block patterns consisted of knowing whether a block went above or below with the blocks properly aligned. The results also indicated that children from lower income families were already falling behind in visual spatial skills due to limited experiences with blocks or other toys that encourage visual spatial development. Parents of lower income children also reported using the words “above” or “below” less often.

A study in Mind, Brain and Education indicated that playing with blocks helps children to understand spatial concepts such as over, around and through. The researchers found that parents who participated in guided block play with their children had significantly higher proportions of spatial talk. Guided block play consisted of playing with the blocks along with guided instructions for how to build different structures.

Maybe next time you see a child struggling with spatial awareness take a quick moment to determine do they understand spatial language the first building block to spatial awareness.

References:

Fisher, K. Interactive play develops kids’ spatial skills. Temple University. Retrieved from the web on 11/3/11 at http://ift.tt/2fyhe6z

Society for Research in Child Development. “A child’s spatial and math thinking likely improved simply by playing with blocks.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 27 Sep. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.

“Brick” Activities for School and Home – “Brick” Activities for Home and School is a collection of activities to use with LEGO® type building blocks. These two dimensional, vertical patterns are easier to complete that your typical 3D LEGO® patterns. Create numbers, alphabet and seasonal objects. You will only need LEGO® style 2×2 and 2×4 size blocks to use the patterns. Also includes tips for data collection and step by step tutorial on how to make your own brick patterns using Word. Find out more information.

Visual Spatial Mazes – This is a HUGE collection of 50 different visual spatial mazes. There are 25 mazes in 11 x 8.5″ size and 25 mazes in 8.5 x 11″. The whole collection is in black and white. They are an intermediate level of difficulty. These mazes are an excellent challenge for fast finishers and visual perceptual skill practice.  Find out more information.

The post Block Play and Spatial Awareness appeared first on Your Therapy Source.

Body Awareness and Spatial Awareness Activity

Need a quick body awareness and spatial relationship brain break that combines estimation with movement and motor planning?  Here is a simple activity that helps students to understand spatial relationships to objects in the classroom.

Start out with each student standing up next to their desk.  Have them guess how many baby steps it will take to walk to the desk in front of them.  Once they have made the estimate, they can count the baby steps it takes.

Now try moving to a target further away with a different movement.  Guess how many jumps it will take to get to the window.  Once the estimate is made, the students can count the jumps it takes them to get to the window.  Return to the starting point.  Now ask the students to double the amount of jumps it took them to get to the window.  The students must now adjust the size of the jumps and how the body moves through space to take double the amount of jumps to the window.

Have the students partner up.  The students can stand at least 10 feet apart.  Estimate how many hops it will take to meet in the middle.  Test you guess and hop to meet in the middle.  Try again with different movements - ie backwards steps, heel to toe walking, lunges, marching etc.  Make sure to remind the students that part of the challenge is meet in the middle but not to touch each other.

 

Title: Personal Space JourneyBy:  Your Therapy Source Inc

Summary: Collection of activities to teach children about personal space
including many body awareness exercises and a social story on personal
space.

Find out more at http://yourtherapysource.com/personalspacejourney.html

5 Ways to Develop Spatial Awareness

Spatial awareness is the ability to understand and interact with the environment around you.  Whether it be avoiding obstacles when walking, reaching out to grab a pencil or determining left from right these are all examples of tasks that require spatial awareness.   Developing the skills to express and understand spatial skills are the first step in understanding spatial ability and awareness such as math skills, visual perceptual skills and body awareness.

Here are 5 activities to help encourage the development of spatial awareness:

1.  Obstacle Courses:  The ability to negotiate an obstacle course requires a significant amount of spatial awareness.  Vary the courses grading them according to the child's ability to move over, under and around objects.

2.  Build and Create:  Use Legos, blocks and puzzles.  Try Tangam puzzles.    Try this free visual spatial puzzle crossing paths.  Research has shown that that parents who participated in guided block play with their children had significantly higher proportions of spatial talk. Guided block play consisted of playing with the blocks along with guided instructions for how to build different structures.  Read more in a previous blog post on block play and spatial awareness.

3.  Practice completing patterns.  You could try Follow the Path or Patterns, Patterns, Patterns. 

4.  Movement Games:  Participate in any type of movement games where children have to move around obstacles or friends.  The ability to move around stationary objects is quite different than around moving objects which are unpredictable.  If you need ideas, try 50 Sensory Motor Activities for Kids! 

5.  Provide verbal descriptions.  Offer many opportunities for children to hear descriptions of where they are or where objects are in relationship to each other.  For example - "The pencil is on the right side of the desk" or "Let's step over the log".  Play games that require children to follow directions - ie Be A Robot.  Try worksheets where children how to follow directions of what colors to use for different letters or shapes ie Color Coding.  

What are your favorite spatial awareness activities?

Block Play and Spatial Awareness

A recent study in Mind, Brain and Education indicated that playing with blocks helps children to understand spatial concepts such as over, around and through. The researchers found that parents who participated in guided block play with their children had significantly higher proportions of spatial talk. Guided block play consisted of playing with the blocks along with guided instructions for how to build different structures.

Developing the skills to express and understand spatial skills are the first step in understanding spatial ability and awareness such as math skills, visual perceptual skills and body awareness. Maybe next time you see a child struggling with spatial awareness take a quick moment to determine do they understand spatial language the first building block to spatial awareness.

Reference: Fisher, K. Interactive play develops kids' spatial skills. Temple University. Retrieved from the web on 11/3/11 at http://news.temple.edu/news/interactive-play-develops-kids-spatial-skills


Building Block Patterns and Games

Get over 40 pages of building block pattern cards and games.

Get more information.








Visual Perceptual Games and Activities

Includes many games to practice visual perceptual activities including block patterns to create and build.

Get more information.