Babies often seem fascinated with their feet. When babies reach for their toes, they are discovering their body through movement. This type of early sensorimotor experience supports the beginnings of their awareness of spatial relationships – in this case the changing location of their feet as they wriggle. These experiences also support awareness of the properties of shapes – a line of toes, the roundness of a ball or the bumpiness of a textured toy – well before children have words for these shape properties. We refer to these kinds of first-hand, physical experiences as ‘embodied learning’.
An embodied approach to learning not only has significant benefits for children's spatial development but the opportunities increase as children become more mobile. For example, research has shown that children who have regular experience of physically exploring a number track on the floor show improved understanding of number. Children start to explore whether they can fit into spaces, boxes or tunnels, and manipulate objects to learn about their size and shape. Research has also shown that teaching children to think and learn spatially will benefit them in maths.
EMBODIED LEARNING AND SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT
Visualisation
Visualisation is the ability to imagine and manipulate objects or places in your mind's eye. It is important for problem-solving, so something that children should practise. They can experiment by visualising and predicting whether a block will fit when they turn it, or whether they can post a shape through a hole, and then check their predictions with the actual block or shape. Similarly, in large-scale play when building a car out of boxes (see Case study), children might visualise whether they have made a hole big enough to fit their head through, and then check this physically. Adults can support spatial explorations by modelling and then scaffolding how to visualise, predict and check how objects might change, move, appear or fit.
Gesture
Gesture is also important for spatial development. Babies and toddlers begin to communicate spatially by using gesture. Adults support this by providing the spatial language, such as ‘up’ or ‘in the car’, which helps the child make connections between the spatial words and their embodied experience. Adults can encourage children to use physical gestures to communicate difficult spatial concepts, for example, by using their hands to gesture small and big, or communicate spatial actions, e.g., gesturing turning a jigsaw puzzle piece to fit. This helps connect the word to the physical action. Research has shown that children who use physical gesture to think about a problem are typically more successful in solving it.
ACTIVITIES
Using our bodies
By observing carefully for spatial learning opportunities, adults can use movement to enrich children's experiences of space and shape. See the Spatial Reasoning Toolkit trajectory for many examples of how to use our bodies for spatial learning.
Babies and toddlers: Songs and rhymes that involve actions or different parts of our bodies can help children explore how their bodies can move, providing opportunities to develop spatial awareness. Baby massage and activities where babies wriggle and hold their hands or feet can support very young children to be aware of their bodies, how they can move and the space around them.
Adult role: Sing songs and rhymes with children, encouraging awareness of their body. ‘This little piggy’ or ‘Round and round the garden’ explore awareness of fingers or toes, while ‘Sleeping bunnies’ encourages whole-body awareness.
Adults might spontaneously join in with children's spatial exploration indoors or outdoors, using spatial words and gestures in context to encourage children to engage in spatial thinking as they move, perhaps planning where they will go or reasoning about the best way to get there. Adults can support spatial language development by providing a running commentary alongside everyday activities. Outdoors, adults can recognise and allow time for children's exploration using their bodies where they might spend time balancing on a wobbly log, walking along a kerb or running their hands along a fence.
Two-to three-year-olds: Games, songs and rhymes that involve curling and stretching, popping up and bobbing down encourage bodily awareness. Children also enjoy fitting into boxes, tunnels and hiding spaces.
Adult role: Encourage children to experiment with the spaces they can fit inside and through, and explore what things look like from different viewpoints. Provide access to tunnels, boxes and spaces where children like to hide, squeeze into and move through. You could use a box can to enact the ‘Jack in a box’ rhyme, encouraging the child to make sure that they crouch low enough for the lid flaps to be flat. ‘Dingle dangle scarecrow’ provides opportunity to learn about the shapes that their body makes. Support with commentary and gestures, discussing too big and too small. Playing like this encourages children to visualise and predict – skills that are important for spatial development and for maths.
Outdoors, adults can provide objects that can be transported and containers. As children are carrying, pushing and pulling these items from one area to another, signals are sent to their brains, giving information about the location of various body parts and updating their mental map of the body.
Have a look at the Spatial Reasoning Toolkit book list. We can encourage the use of gestures and emphasise spatial language when enjoying books together. Lift-the-flap books and books with maps are particularly rich in spatial thinking.
Three-to five-year-olds: At this age, children draw on their bodily awareness to follow routines. They need to consider the space between themselves and the next person when lining up, sitting at the dinner table or painting in groups. These routines highlight spatial properties such as size, shape and length, which can be linked to spatial concepts like next to and between, which can be more difficult to grasp as they are about where something is in relation to something else. Concepts such as taller and wider can be supported with gestures.
Adult role: Adults can look for opportunities to develop spatial thinking outdoors, for example creating a number line out of conkers for children to touch, move along and physically explore. Games where children practise hand-eye co-ordination, such as catching beanbags, support spatial development.
Providing chalk for children to trace around their friend's body (see Case study) encourages physical motor experience and provides representation of the size and shape of the body, increasing bodily awareness. Supporting with spatial language, such as ‘curvy’, ‘corner’ and ‘straight’, can be useful while tracing the outline, as well as comparative language about the length of the chalked body compared to items in the environment or other children.
Sitting in a circle for snack time or lining-up routines introduce spatial conversations about fit, shape (line, circle) and bodily space. It is important to encourage children to use gestures. This will enhance spatial conversation. Some children naturally do this, but others don't. For older children, games like ‘Simon says’ and ‘Heads, shoulders knees and toes’ encourage representation of the body.
case study: Sharon Palfreyman, Corrie Primary and Nursery School, Tameside
Sharon used the Spatial Reasoning Toolkit to create a series of activities that encouraged children to use their whole bodies and helped them to understand the concept of ‘fit’, such as making chalk outlines of each other's bodies. ‘The children are sometimes surprised when they stand and view the outline of their own bodies and will often try to lie down within the chalk marks as if to check it really is them. I usually find children want to add facial details or ask for their names to be added.’ Sharon used the shapes drawn to compare sizes and to talk about the properties of different parts of the drawings, using spatial words and gestures for longer, narrower, round and bumpy.
Sharon also provided large boxes and tunnels for children to explore, encouraging them to use spatial language and gesture to communicate. She says, ‘Children built a beautiful fire engine from two large cardboard boxes. They used visualisation and prediction to determine whether they would fit inside. One child discovered that their head could fit through the window, but only if they looked to the side to get it through.
‘Those that couldn't fit climbed on top of the box to put out fires. The children were keen to tell others if they were “too big” or there was no space left.’
FURTHER INFORMATION
- The Spatial Reasoning Toolkit is available on the Early Childhood Mathematics Group (ECMG) website.
