Tips on how to teach your child to solve a puzzle

1. Choose the most interesting puzzle for your children according to their age. A cartoon puzzle may be a good one for your kids, just to get them excited and have fun playing with puzzle. The number of pieces also plays an important part. Make sure you choose a small number of pieces i.e. (<20 pieces) for children below 3 years and at a reasonable size. Not too small to avoid choking.
2. Show him/her the whole picture of the puzzle before they start separating/mixing the pieces. This is to ensure that they know and at least have a picture in their mind on what are they solving of.
3. Make sure all pieces are facing up, i.e. the colour pieces are on top, so that it will be easier for our children to match and solve the pieces.
4. Be with them, show and ask them whether they can notice on what actually the pieces shows. For instance; let say your child is trying to solve a big puzzle of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Try to ask and relate one picture of Mickey’s leg and ask them to find another pieces for the other legs-same colour of shoes etc
5. Make the activities more interesting and motivate them by saying “Well done dear!”, “Good job baby” for every pieces that they have successfully solved although it is just a pair of them. Clapping hands for them will also encourage them to solve even more until they completed the whole puzzle.
6. Enjoy solving the puzzle with them and make it a favourite past time activity as solving puzzle is one of the development and good brainy activity for children.

Learning Tools for kids

While our children are developing skills via playing, we as parents need to give supports and be part of them during the development process. Since we do not want them to just play around without get the opportunity to learn, good learning tools are definitely a must for them.

There are many choices available in the market for you to choose. First, you need to identify on what skills actually you want them to develop at that point of time. For instance, if we want them to improve their critical motor skills in addition to learning the cause and effect, a wooden toy train can be a good learning tool.

Letting them playing with puzzle may also encourage our children manipulating and coordination skills via trial and error when solving the puzzle. Our children may also develop good problem solving skills; help them to increase their visual and overall special awareness.

Do you know any other learning tools that are widely used by other children?