NURSERY 1 (born in 2017)

Spatial perception is the awareness of the (positional) relationship between two or more objects in space. This could be a first person perspective (interoceptive process) or third person perspective (exteroceptive process).

The first step in understanding spatial orientation is through one’s own perspective.

In this lesson, children will be introduced to the concept of front and back orientation. Here, they will observe the front and back views of both living and non-living things through both concrete and pictorial materials. For example, the front of an animal is where you can see its face, while the back of the animal is where you see its tail.

The next set of activities seeks to help your child understand front and back positions. For instance, he/she will be tasked to pass the ball from one person to the next person in front or behind. Through which, he/she will also observe how the size and positional arrangement of objects/person(s) affects the resultant front and back view.

Good spatial awareness allows children to think in two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, to visualize, recognize and perceive objects from different angles, regardless of one’s own physical position.

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NURSERY 2 (born in 2016)

Visual-spatial perception refers to the ability to understand the relationship between an object and another reference object, in terms of:

• Distance (how far apart the objects are)
• Location (where the objects are relative to each other)
• Direction of movement
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Visual-spatial thinking is not a single skill, but encompasses a combination of cognitive abilities and life skills such as hand-eye coordination, left-right discrimination and pattern recognition.
For example, a child with good spatial sense may find athletic success by knowing where to reposition oneself on the playing field, in order to receive an incoming ball of a certain path.
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This lesson, we seek to reinforce your child’s understanding of directional movement. Recalling adverbs such as under, over, left and right, children will need to demonstrate quick reflexes, teamwork and an understanding of directional commands, to pass a ball around.

As with term 1, we will continue to use the 3x3 grid memory game format to develop working memory and visual-spatial sense. Now however, children are challenged to remember and match even more items than previously attempted. Additionally, your child will be introduced to the 1x5 grid format, where we will reinforce ordinal positions from first to fifth. Moreover, he/she will learn how to describe and subsequently deduce the specific locations of objects with positional words such as “above”, “in-between” and “below”. This seeks to internalize learning, exercise logical reasoning and strengthen verbal communication skills.

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KINDERGARTEN 1 (born in 2015)

Working memory is essentially a mental sticky note used to hold on to and keep track of information in short term memory until the need arises.
 
It is an important part of executive functioning (e.g. planning, initiating, task monitoring, organizing) and crucial for academic performance.
 
In this lesson, we focus on the visual-spatial aspect of working memory. Using a 3 x 3 grid memory game as previously introduced back in N2, children are challenged to remember how 2-5 different objects are arranged.
 
In addition, your child will also learn to describe a specific position on the grid using “rows”, “columns” and a composition of positional keywords i.e. “top-right corner”.
 
Moreover, he/she will also be introduced to the map coordinate system, where an ordered pair of alphabets and numbers, found along the x and y axis respectively, can be used to specify a location (grid square).
 
Ultimately, these activities act as precursors to map reading and data management (i.e. graph plotting, table-chart). More importantly, to develop your child’s working memory capacity to hold more information, retain these information for longer periods of time, as well as increase the accessibility/speed at which these information is recalled/retrieved from working memory storage.

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KINDERGARTEN 2 (born in 2014)

Visual perspective-taking is a form of cognitive flexibility, involving the ability to perceive 3D objects from various angles beyond one’s own viewpoint, even without having to physically reposition oneself or the 3D object in question.
 
To do that, your child will need to create a mental image of what he/she sees, before visualizing how that point of view will change as he/she shifts to the opposite or adjacent position.
 
Engaging in such visual-spatial activities helps develop left-right discrimination, depth perception and the mental capacity to re-create and rotate objects in 3D space.
 
Back in term 1, children work on the multi-directional (front, back, left, right, top) perspective-taking of a single object. Now, however, your child will be presented with a composition of two or more objects – to consider how the relative position and size of objects, as one object may affect how another object is viewed.
 
We place greater understanding on familiarizing your child to the “line of sight” technique, used to illustrate the order to which a composition of objects is viewed from a given angle. Application of this technique is further reinforced through practical examples and drawing exercises.
 
Such activities aim to strengthen your child’s mastery of perspective-taking (particularly from the opposite direction), while providing a framework to teach young children empathy, emotional self-regulation and conflict resolution, by considering/relating to how another person might think and feel in different scenarios.



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Next LESSON'S focus:
THINKING WITH numbers