A famous Israeli artist Yaacov Agam was upset. He marched into the center for scientific research in education and declared, “Children are visually illiterate!” The education researchers worked with him to further develop and test a program he created to teach visual literacy based on a theory of shapes and how they combine to make everything from alphabetic letters to great art. (https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/early-math-introducing-geometry-young-children/)
The central goal of the Agam Program is to help young children develop their visual thinking, as a means to improve their overall cognitive and emotional development. The program Inspired, initiated, and written by the artist, Yaacov Agam, and has been refined, developed, implemented, and tested by the staff of the Agam Project. Implementation of the program in Israel has been in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Education. Recent educational research underscores the importance of this goal.
The Agam Program includes 36 units that progressively and logically integrate specific concepts, which can be viewed as elements in a visual alphabet, with specific skills. This visual alphabet is the basis for more advanced units which deal in concepts like symmetry, the four dimensions, and proportionality.”