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This paper aims to provide further understanding of strategies used by first graders to reproduce 3D shapes, in what concerns spatial structuring and spatial reasoning processes involved. The data were collected during a teaching experiment where the pupils had to reproduce two 3D shapes using cubes, first from a 3D model and then from a 2D representation of a 3D model. The strategies pupils used indicate different levels of local and global structuring, and, sometimes, a progression to upper levels, based on the establishment of more complex relationships between components and composites, anchored in the use of manipulatives. These relationships also seem to be supported by spatial reasoning processes.