Spatial Problem Solving

This app is designed to assist in the development of spatial reasoning skills. Educational researchers have found that the elementary curriculum is strengthened when teachers make more of a conscious effort to include spatial reasoning challenges as classroom activities.

Spatial reasoning skills seem to be somewhat localized in the brain. The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is the area of the brain associated with spatial awareness and plays a role in the perception of 2D and 3D objects in space.

Other areas of the brain are more critical in processing verbal information. Logical and sequential processing have been found to be more often associated with the left hemisphere of the brain but research on hemisphericity of the brain is evolving and this concept is debated by neuroscientists.

This app provides an open area for exploration. Students can invent their own space filling activities using the number bars to create shapes. Similar space filling projects can be provided using tangrams. The main purpose of this type of activity is to visualize the size and rotation of the shapes that are required to cover an open area. Unlike tangram puzzles, all of the pieces here are based on one or more squares. The shapes represent the numbers from 1 to 10.

The app also provides a set of challenges. These are accessed by tapping the question mark icon. The object for each challenge is to cover the open areas in the puzzle with number bars. In most cases there are several ways to solve it.