Most kids have difficulty learning the difference between right and left and to develop a sense of navigation or spatial skill is one of the important concepts of math.
Kids with well developed spatial skills are very creative, dramatic, artistic and musical.
There are many fun kids math games developing such spatial skill which I enjoy playing with the kids at my center but the games described below are some of my favorites.
Beautiful colors You can help your kids differentiate between right and left by using colors.
Kids usually know the names of basic colors like red, blue, green and yellow before they learn direction as colors are something which they can see and easily associate with things around them.
Tie colored ribbon around their wrists, for example, tie yellow on the right wrist and green on the left.
Then you ask them to raise their right hand, the yellow one or the left hand, the green one.
This is one of the many simple and fun kids math games which will help them to connect or associate the color with the correct direction.
Playing traffic policeman Kids have boundless energy and they never seem to be able to sit still.
I would usually play this game during their break time where I will have one kid pretending to be a traffic policeman.
She will wear a blue glove on the right hand and a red glove on the left hand.
She will be directing traffic as to where each kid will be sitting at their table for their break.
When I say this kid goes to the right, she will have to raise her right hand with the blue glove and similarly with the left hand.
The kids cannot wait for their turn to play this game which is one of the many kids math games which we play to help them to learn the concept of direction.
Bowling game You would need a ball and some empty plastic bottles.
Line up the bottles in a row like bowling pins and let the kid use the ball to hit the bottles from varying distances.
They must listen carefully to know which hand they must use to roll the ball and if they use the wrong hand their scores will be subtracted.
I would usually play this game as a competition to see which group can bowl down the most bottles to make it more fun and exciting.
This is one of the excellent kids math games which we play at the center as it not only help to develop their coordination and navigation skills but also on their counting and arithmetic skills such as addition and subtraction as I would involve the kids on how to keep a scorecard by learning to count the number of bottles which fell, adding or subtracting the scores to decide which group is the winner.
Kids gain a great sense of accomplishment when they learn to do things with their hands and playing these kids math games helps them to refine their motor skills at they involve the small muscle movements of their hands and fingers in coordination with their eyes and also require dexterity, precision and manipulative skills.