Finding the missing piece: Blocks, puzzles, and shapes fuel school readiness

Experiences with spatial toys such as blocks, puzzles, and shape games, and the spatial words and gestures they evoke from adults, have a significant influence on the early development of spatial skills. Spatial skills are important for success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields [77] (e.g., Wai, Lubinski, Benbow and Steiger, 2010), and are related to early mathematics performance [48] (Mix and Cheng, 2012), as early as age 3 [73] (Verdine, Golinkoff et al., in press). This paper focuses on the effects of early spatial experiences and their impacts on school readiness, discusses factors that influence the amount and quality of spatial play, and suggests methods for providing a “spatial education” prior to school entry.