Learning Elements tied to Working on Vertical Spaces

This article provides helpful information about how working on vertical spaces helps kids learn better in the classroom. Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. Affiliate details are included for your convenience. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.

Children spend most of their day working on horizontal spaces. They write at their desks, they play games at the table, and they often play with toys on the floor.

So why should we encourage kids to work and play more on vertical spaces?

The truth is, providing kids with opportunities to work on vertical spaces activates other muscles and strengthens the body for supporting other types of learning skills.

Ever think about how our kids do all of these types of activities?

Copying notes from the chalkboard

Typing on the computer

Painting on an easel

Sitting at a desk for long periods of time

Typically, we don’t think about it at all. That’s because most of these skills are developed overtime and come to us automatically, which should also happen to our children.

Kids who work and play on more vertical spaces activate different muscles in the core, arms, hands and shoulders to support many of the learning areas above as well as several others. However, there are those children who have not yet developed these same skills. Many children experience delays in motor movements or strength in areas of their body that prevent them from building those foundational skills needed for higher learning concepts.

To help kids stimulate these areas of development, parents and teachers can encourage kids to participate in vertical space activities to build strength in their bodies for higher learning skills like reading, writing and listening to the teacher. Or, use a few of these toys to get kids utilizing vertical surfaces. 

Motor Benefits of Working on Vertical Spaces

Children who struggle with core strength and motor skills may find several benefits when working on vertical spaces. Activities that require children to use vertical spaces help improve their physical and motor strength in the following ways:

Motor Skills and Coordination

Working on vertical spaces engages the large muscles of the back, arms and shoulders, which supports handwriting development. Kids who tire easily or shake out their arms and hands while writing often struggle in school. Activating those muscles through vertical space activities requires kids to reach up and out for longer periods of time. They provide arm and elbow stability while also improving posture and hand-eye coordination.

Core Muscle and Posture Stability

If a child is working on a vertical space when drawing, painting or coloring, it requires them to stand or sit upright for long periods of time. This activates the core and improves the strength they have to hold their torso and upper body in an upright position needed for reading, writing and sitting at a desk. These types of activities also require the child to bring their arm away from their body, which activates the core and improves posture. If a child is laying on their desk due to poor core stability or posture, they can’t fully listen to the teacher or copy notes from the chalkboard. It may also cause kids to fidget or shift positions frequently because the child is trying to compensate for a weak core. Engaging kids in activities that require vertical work helps build those upper extremities and provide more controlled movements to support learning in the classroom.

Hand Strength and Fine Motor Development

Kids working on vertical spaces also benefit when it comes to fine motor and hand strength development needed for pencil grip and handwriting. Kids who use vertical spaces must reach out their arms and hands when participating in these activities. This variation helps build muscles in the hands and fingers to strengthen small motor muscles for pencil grip and letter directionality. When the hands and fingers have to fight against gravity to work on vertical spaces, greater hand strength and durability prepares kids for manipulating a pencil or writing device on the page.

Visual Motor Skills

Typically, children who have had lots of tummy time when they were babies should already have a good sense of depth perception when using their visual motor skills. However, kids who struggle to track words on the page or those who have trouble processing visual information may have delayed visual motor skills. This causes them to fall behind in reading and writing development. Using a vertical surface gets kids coordinating their hand and eye movements more efficiently. It also allows kids to use a larger vertical space to develop that depth perception as well as their visual spatial awareness needed for handwriting skills. 

Shoulder, Wrist, Arm and Elbow Strength

When people think of handwriting, it’s common to believe it’s only about the hands and fingers when doing the work. The fact is, the body requires muscles from the back and shoulders all the way down to the elbow, arm and wrist for complete handwriting development. Working on vertical spaces provides muscle confusion for those areas of the body to allow more full movements on a vertical surface rather than a flat horizontal space. These types of activities foster greater stability in the arms, wrists and elbows while also improving flexibility of the joints and muscles for better writing pressure and pencil grip.

Learning Benefits of Working on Vertical Spaces

Now that we have covered how working on vertical spaces helps a child’s motor development and core strength, let’s talk about how it can improve a child’s learning potential. Building all of these motor skills benefits and strengthens the child’s ability to be more successful in the classroom in the following ways:

Pencil Grip and Handwriting

Writing on vertical spaces automatically get kids to extend their arms and hands in a position for handwriting-readiness and pencil grip. Not only does it strengthen these areas for handwriting, it provides kids with a larger area to write on so they can further develop spatial awareness. This further develops the child’s skills needed for letter directionality and spacing letters and numbers as they write across the page. Vertical spaces also help kids keep their hands stable and supported for when they transfer to a flat horizontal space used more commonly in schools. With this also comes proper wrist extension that supports the child’s efforts to hold the pencil correctly, which eventually leads to a more accurate tripod grip.

Reading and Tracking

Tracking words on the page doesn’t always come easily for some children. It requires strong visual motor skills and the ability to follow along the page. Because reading is also a directional skill, kids need to know where their body is in space to have good vertical orientation for reading development. Working on vertical spaces provides kids with opportunities to work up, down, bottom, top, left and right. These types of activities allow kids to track their work across the page and develop sequencing skills important for math and comprehension.

Attention and Focus

Without good posture and core strength, kids may struggle to stay seated in their chair. This can give the impression that children are experiencing hyperactivity or ADHD-like behaviors. Sometimes it just requires building core strength and posture to support the child’s attention and focus in the classroom. Allowing kids to work on vertical spaces, especially when using unstable surfaces like bosu balls and exercise balls to write or draw, require the child to engage those muscles. Strengthening those areas with vertical space activities helps kids to sit upright for longer periods of time and supports the upper body so they aren’t constantly shifting in their desk. It also gives kids a greater advantage when needing to get their notes from the chalkboard to their paper without distractions, falling out of their desk or losing their place on the page.

If you think your child or students are struggling with any of these learning areas, try a few of these activities using vertical spaces to see improvements.

Children who often work, play and watch shows on hand-held devices should be encouraged to prop up their devices allowing them to work on a vertical surface. Use this special writing stylus compatible with all hand-held devices to get kids writing on their hand-held device rather than swiping for improved hand strength and pencil grip.

For a list of 50 activities kids can do to play on vertical spaces, complete the form and we’ll send you the download.

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Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs