Where’s my seat? Ah! There’s my seat …! The wonder of Spatial Reasoning

I recently heard this story from a grandmother who had bought some tickets to take her cricket-loving grandsons to see a T20 cricket match.

There was great excitement!

‘Can I show you the cricket ground on Google Maps?’ one of them asked her. She was more than happy to go along with this suggestion. After all, her grandson’s technical skills were much better than hers!

She was so impressed as he used Google Maps to find the cricket ground. Then, looking at the venue’s website together, they looked at the seating plan and found out where they would be seated; then, back on Google Maps, found out where they are going to sit and what the view is like.

This activity is actually very mathematical. It is using what is known as Spatial Reasoning and this is a very important mathematical and practical skill.

For example, you use this skill to find your seat at a wedding reception once you have seen the seating plan.

We can easily help a child to develop this as we use this skill quite a lot in our everyday life.

From a very early age, helping your child to grasp the concepts of what ‘under’ means, or ‘on top of’, or ‘over’, or ‘beside’ … is so important.

The Early Childhood Maths Group have designed some wonderful posters explaining this more. Do take a look!

Spatial reasoning toolkit posters – ECMG (earlymaths.org)

Enjoy your Easter Holidays!