Roxy's Learning About Puzzles!

This week Roxy is working on improving her fine motor skills by doing… puzzles!

Learning to do puzzles is not only great for fine motor skills, but it’s also a great way for kids to start learning:

• To play by themselves (which is really beneficial when you as a parent are trying to do something like make meals, talk on the phone, or finish a work project)

• To play with others (like sharing puzzle pieces, taking turns, deciding who will put the last piece in)

• Spatial awareness (all the different ways to flip a puzzle piece to see if it fits!)

• Memory (the more they do the same puzzle, the faster they will get by memorizing which pieces go where)

• And Even working on language development (by talking about the things going on in the picture of the puzzle! What colours do you see? What animals? People? Weather? Shapes? Letters? Numbers? Counting objects? And much more!)

If your child is just starting to learn to do puzzles, you might want to start with a small Peg Puzzle (example) or Chunk Puzzle (example)!

After that, you might work into frame puzzles! There are frame puzzles of many sizes from 4-pieces to 48-pieces! It’s always a good idea to work from easiest (like a 4-piece) to hardest (like a 48-piece). Next, you could try a framed jigsaw with irregular pieces (example)!

After that, your child will be ready for puzzles without a frame! Again, you can start with easy 4-piece puzzles, and work up to as large as you can imagine!

Roxy is working on a larger framed puzzle today... we’ll see if she practices enough to one day be able to finish a 2000-piece puzzle!