What is Spatial Awareness

Spatial Awareness is the ability to recognise where you are in relation to surrounding objects and where the objects are in relation to each other. Playing sports like netball, basketball, football and soccer use this skill to consider where you are in relation to the ball, and in relation to the rest of the players on the court or field are.

The best way to develop good spatial awareness is to practise and actively participating in different activities.

How to develop Spatial Awareness

Octagon is a great game that can be used to develop spatial awareness skills, while playing you need to consider where the objects on the board are and where they might need to be placed to complete the puzzle, in doing this you are considering when the objects should have a spatial gap or when they will sit side by side. Octagon can help you by first helping you develop spatial awareness in 2 Dimensions before challenging you to consider the 3-Dimensional world.

Some useful strategies

There are a range of strategies you can employ while playing Octagon to develop spatial awareness and succeed in solving the challenges;

• The first is simply attempting and practising different challenges and getting a feel for the different ways the pieces connect and the patterns they form.
• A second strategy is visualisation, look at the different pieces and try and visualise the different ways they might fit together in your mind, you can do this with your eyes open or closed.

Improved Problem Solving

Sometimes it is easy to get stuck on one area or one piece, when this happens it is a good idea to look up, take a deep breath and try and look at the whole board. If you are still stuck, take a few pieces out and review your approach.

In this way, you not only are improving your spatial awareness but also challenging your own perceptions and perspective (view).

The result is a better ability to solve problems!