Spatial abilities are incredibly important for any job or task that requires you to be able to mentally interpret real and virtual relationships between objects. It is basically how your brain visualizes spaces & objects and how they interact, then applying that visualization to real world situations or problems.
This is particularly true in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), where spatial skills have been shown to predict how well any given person performs. However, traditional education does little to develop these essential skills, and many underperform due to a lack of spatial ability.
Whilst some people, particularly males, have a natural aptitude for spatial skills, there is now a significant body of research that show spatial abilities can be drastically improved with a small amount of simple training. For example, one study that gave women 1 hour training sessions found that gender differences in spatial ability were almost eliminated!
A lot of other research has shown that kids who play with blocks and other building toys have significantly better spatial ability compared with those that do not. Additionally, since boys are more likely to play with these types of toys than girls and spatial skills predict STEM ability, this is likely another explanation for the lack of women and girls in STEM.
If playing with these toys has been shown to drastically improve this crucial ability, then it seems like a pretty simple solution is to introduce more kids to this type of play. For younger kids, building blocks can sometimes be a bit complicated, so we recommend magnetic building toys for toddlers to develop spatial skills.
This is because the magnetic components are super easy to fit together and take apart, meaning toddlers can easily build and create without having to worry too much about motor skills. They can then progress to well known construction toys like Lego, though there are many more such as K'Nex and Meccano that are also great.
Simply spending time playing with these toys may be beneficial for kids, but there are also ways to further improve the learning experience and development of spatial skills. Research has shown that 'structured block play', where kids are shown a picture or model that they then have to work out how to build, to be extra beneficial.
