This course specifically promotes spatial thinking in children in first and second grade. Spatial thinking is a fundamental cognitive skill that plays a central role both in everyday life and in many professional fields — particularly in STEM. Studies show that spatial abilities are closely linked to mathematical and scientific performance, as well as long-term academic and professional success in these areas. Early support is therefore particularly valuable. 

Spatial thinking includes various subskills such as processing spatial information (e.g., shape and position of objects) and mentally transforming them, for example through rotation, decomposition, or reconstruction. These processes support goal-directed action, problem-solving, and decision-making. 

This Hector Core Course focuses on two key aspects: 

• Spatial perspective-taking – the ability to adopt another person’s viewpoint
• Mental rotation – the ability to mentally rotate objects and view them from different angles 

These competencies are developed using age-appropriate methods such as imagination exercises, mental journeys, puzzles, and playful task formats.