Spatial reasoning games for kids

Spatial thinking is picturing shapes and how they turn, flip and fit together — reading a map, building from Lego instructions, or working out whether a sofa will fit through the door.

In Mirror Magic your child copies, mirrors and rotates coloured patterns on a grid. In Same or Mirror? they decide whether a turned shape is the same or its mirror image. Both games start simple and add bigger grids, finer turns and time limits.

What the research says

Spatial skills have some of the strongest training evidence in psychology. A large review by Uttal and colleagues (2013), combining over 200 studies, found that spatial practice improved spatial skills by a meaningful amount, for children and adults alike.

Those gains lasted over time and carried over to other spatial tasks that were not trained. That is why this skill area carries the “Strong evidence” label — though, as always, a few minutes a day is a small part of the picture.

Sources:

• Uttal et al. (2013), Psychological Bulletin: the malleability of spatial skills

Try it at home, off-screen

• Build a LEGO model from the picture only.
• Do a jigsaw puzzle or a tangram.
• Draw a map of your room as seen from above.