In "Finding Their Way: Family Engagement with Digital Math Activities Helps Children Develop Spatial Skills," a new blog post on the Global Family Research Project website, EDC researchers Heather Sherwood and Dr. Ashley Lewis Presser describe their work with SRI International and WGBH to create digital and non-digital activities to help preschoolers develop spatial skills. 

Young children's mathematical knowledge has been shown to predict their future success in school, and recent research has increasingly shown that very young children are capable of devloping math skills that are more sophisticated than just counting and identifying shapes. In their blog post, Sherwood and Lewis Presser describe the development of a module of learning activities for preschoolers and their parents, the research that evaluated the effectiveness of the module in teaching spatial skills, and examples of activities that support parent and child engagement in the development of spatial ability through everyday activities both in and outside the home.

Click here to read the blog post.