Spatial reasoning
8 articles
Puzzles and Shape Sorters for Young Children: Developmental Value and Age Guide
Shape sorters and puzzles are one of the few toy categories where the simplest, cheapest versions do as much developmental work as the elaborate ones....
What Building Play Develops in Early Childhood
When a 2-year-old knocks over a tower for the fifteenth time and starts rebuilding, they aren't just playing — they're running one of the highest-yiel...
Puzzles and Shape Sorters for Young Children
Shape sorters and puzzles are among the most reliably developmental toys you can put on a shelf — they build spatial reasoning, fine motor control, an...
Magnetic Building Games for Toddlers
Magnetic tiles arrived in the toddler toy market about fifteen years ago and have since taken over a noticeable slice of every preschool and family-ro...
Building and Construction Play
A toddler stacking three blocks and then knocking them down is doing physics. They're testing balance, gravity, and stability, with their own structur...
How Building Toys Develop Spatial Reasoning
Spatial reasoning is the quiet workhorse of childhood cognition. It's how a toddler figures out which block holds the tower up, how a four-year-old pl...
Block Play by Developmental Stage
Few play materials have the research record blocks do. Wolfgang and colleagues followed preschoolers' block play and found it predicted high-school ma...
Block Play: From Stacking to Complex Structures
Harriet Johnson, working at the Bank Street School in the 1920s and 30s, watched children build with blocks long enough to describe seven distinct sta...