Do you children love jigsaw puzzles? Do they complete puzzles quickly and keep wanting more? It may turn out to be a great trait to have, plus, they get to develop several critical abilities and skills.
Jigsaw puzzles are one of the sure ways to keep children engaged, while developing their cognition and visual spatial knowledge and thinking skills. For children, jigsaw puzzles further help them to develop patience, concentration and goal setting skills.
They also give them a sense of achievement. If your child is a puzzle lover and solves jigsaw puzzles quickly, here are some ways to make it more challenging and exciting. Read on to find out how.
Children may be excited to solve puzzles and sometimes, repeat the same jigsaw puzzles several times. There’s a probability that they get bored of solving the same puzzle. And since the children are up for a challenge, you can make them solve a particularly tough puzzle with a timer!
Make it timed for better challenges
“Solve these puzzles under five minutes,” would make all children put their best efforts into getting most if it right.
If your child has aced one puzzle with a certain number of pieces and you aren’t sure if they can move on to a puzzle with more pieces, try mixing up two puzzles!
Send your child to another room, take two puzzles with equal difficulty and mix up the pieces. When your child assembles two puzzles at the same time, it will help the child improve his/her ability to widen their focus.
For the seasoned puzzle enthusiast, referring to the picture on the box might make it easy! How about taking away the picture in the box?
If you remove the picture from their sight, they tend to use their spatial knowledge and logic to solve the jigsaw puzzle, rather than just copy the image and find the pieces that fit.
Without a reference picture, you think harder to finish a puzzle
For younger children, you can let your child look at the picture just once and let them solve the puzzle on their own.
It’s one thing to master a puzzle and solve it in record time. As your child solves more jigsaw puzzles, they would get a fair idea on how to go about solving one jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes, it might get monotonous. What if your child can try solving it upside down? Sounds interesting, right?
However, it needs to be strictly monitored, because as the puzzle becomes a little challenging, they might be tempted to solve it the normal way!
It is standard procedure to begin with the edges, then proceed to the pieces inside. This helps the child solve the jigsaw puzzle easily, as getting the edges fixed will lend a structure to the setup. To make it challenging, introduce a rule that says: don’t start the puzzle with the edges.
Jigsaws can be made even more fun and challenging
This will make the puzzle a bit more challenging and in turn, improve their spatial knowledge and understanding.
What better way to make a child perform better than to introduce some healthy competition? You can invite other children of the same age group and competencies to play two puzzles of the same difficulty, or ask them to take on a single particularly tough jigsaw puzzle from different points.
Can you think of other ways to make a jigsaw puzzle session more interesting? Share your answer with us in the comments.
Aparna is a mom, singer and dreamer. At BYJU'S, she writes stories about learning for children. She believes in the power of music, especially ghazal, the magic of the universe and happy learners. When not writing or singing, you will find her intensely engaged in conversations about life and the power of words.
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