Fun Way to Build Spatial Understanding of Flip, Turns, and Slides
Young children are being exposed to elementary geometric concepts at a younger age than ever before. Some attribute this to the new push due to "Common Core Standards", while others state the increased pressure for students to build their fundamental math concepts is a result of the United States less than stellar performance in the latest round of PISA testing. Whatever the actual reason is, there is no disputing the reality, or the need for our nation's students to both competent and competitive members of the global knowledge economy.
Symmetry Shuffle by Carstens Studios does an amazing job of introducing and fine-tuning both a child's skill and their understanding of spatial geometric concepts such as flip, turns, and slides. A student can choose between two different play modes "race" or "solve"; along with an option for "easy" or "hard "modes. There are also options for grid size and icons (used in the transformations). The only downside of the game I encountered -other than a difficulty in solving some of the actual puzzles- was in using the "arrow controls" whist on my iPad mini. However, once I moved onto a full-size iPad this issue was reduce to only a minor nuisance. I found the game play to be additive and I could feel the brain buzz as I was challenged with increasingly more difficult puzzles.
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As for the relevance to current educational goals and alignment with the current relating research, close my review with this excerpt:
Geometric and spatial thinking are important in and of themselves, because they connect mathematics with the physical world (Excerpt from "Progressions for the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, June 23, 2012)
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RickMeyers
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