Vinaire's Blog

Spatial sense is having the sense of direction, distance and location with respect to one’s environment. Orientation is getting adjusted to that environment.

To get oriented one needs to spot the relative locations of various things in one’s environment. To spot a location one only needs to know the direction it is in and its distance from one.

A direction is the line along which attention may be directed. There is infinity of directions radiating out from one’s location. The main directions are FRONT, BACK, ABOVE, BELOW, LEFT and RIGHT. The directions of LEFT and RIGHT are difficult for a child to recognize until he or she reaches Kindergarten.

A distance is the separation between two locations. There is infinity of different distances in any one direction. The distances may be identified roughly as NEAR or FAR.

A position of an object tells us how it is located in relation to other objects, such as, IN, OUT, ON, UNDER, MIDDLE, and NEXT TO. A child may learn these positions as part of learning the language, but may also be taught as part of mathematics.

Spatial locations combine into shape. A very common shape is rectangle that most doors and windows have. Other shapes are triangles, circles, etc. These shapes may be drawn on a plane surface. They are two dimensional because they have length and breadth, or width and height.

Most objects are three dimensional because they have a third dimension of thickness or depth. Examples of simple objects are cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, etc.

Shapes and objects are symmetrical when one half is the mirror image of the other half. Most bodies are symmetrical. Objects may slide, flip or spin in space.

Our body is an object that exists in space. Therefore, orientation and spatial sense is an important subject for a child to become familiar with. Here are some exercises in this subject for the kindergarten level.

LEVEL K1: ORIENTATION & SPATIAL SENSE

“Orientation & Spatial Sense” forms the foundation of the subject of GEOMETRY. It introduces the elements of space and how these elements may relate to the student.

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