Puzzles provide good practice in motor skills, visual perception, as well as cognitive skills around organisation and strategy. Puzzles teach patience and perseverance and offer reward through satisfaction of the complete image. Puzzles can be a solo activity but is also a great pastime for a group of friends or family.
A well-chosen jigsaw puzzle can derive satisfaction and aid development while having fun. Giving a child too difficult a puzzle may cause frustration and even boredom as they struggle to complete it. So choosing the right puzzle is important and below are some tips to help you
When to start with Puzzles? What makes a puzzle difficult?
The level of difficulty is influenced by many things, such as:
- Number of pieces
- Piece sizes
- The degree of detail of the picture and colour variation
- The child's experience with jigsaw puzzles
- The quality of the puzzle (poor quality puzzles can lead to frustration as the pieces can bend or warp as well as the cut of the puzzle pieces)
Puzzles for the littlest hands
There are puzzles for most ages starting from wooden peg puzzles and giant floor puzzles that are more activity based than problem solving. Remember that each child’s skills develop differently and below is a basic guide. Start slowly as reward will inspire to continue and too difficult a puzzle will lead to frustration.
Puzzles for a 3-year old
The youngest begin their jigsaw experience with large pieces that can easily be grabbed and rotated. Puzzle start with as little as 4 pieces in this age range and expand out to up to 20 pieces as the child becomes more experienced and motor skills improve. It is important to pick images that your child enjoys and images that are well known to the young mind. Animals, vehicles, fairy tales and foods are often the best choices.
At this age, your child likes to see well-known objects and characters with which they have previously had contact. We offer the most popular fairy tales and bedtime stories read around the world. Moreover, there are animals, vehicles, and situational scenes.
Puzzles for 4 to 5 years
With the increase in experience from the first puzzles, your child begins to improve the rotating and joining of pieces. Still they often use trial and error, but they begin to work out the first systematic method of testing the match. This is a sign that you can move on to puzzles with a larger number of pieces or more complex images. From here can move to similar format with smaller pieces.
As they get to 5 and their skills develop further, they can progress to 30, 40, 50 and even 60 piece puzzles.
Puzzles for 6 to 8 years
6-year olds are developing enough synthetic capability that they can define the pieces in relation to their place in the puzzle, as well as sort them. They will start to develop their own methods and strategies for doing the puzzle utilising shape, colour, and even the object in the picture.
Children in this age group are looking for toys that they will find more challenging. Depending on their previous experience, eight-year-olds can cope with puzzles with 260 and even 500 pieces. This is a great age to join in with the family for a group puzzle activity.
It is important to bear in mind the number of pieces and the degree of complexity may vary depending on the individual child's ability so let them guide you as to their skill level.
Happy Puzzling!