The Benefits of Puzzles for Toddlers
Are you looking for an easy inexpensive activity to keep your little one entertained? Well look no further. Puzzles are a great choice and something that can be enjoyed from childhood to adulthood. I have found that puzzles can be a great way to keep toddlers and young children entertained while also serving an educational purpose. Puzzles allow us to exercise our minds and to challenge our thinking. Here are three main skills for early childhood development that your child will be building on when working with puzzles.
Physical Skills
Hand-Eye Coordination: When working with puzzles your child will find a correlation between what their eyes see and what their hands do.
Fine Motor Skills: Your child will be working on developing their fine motor skills by using small and precise movements to put the pieces where they need to go. Buying chunky puzzles or puzzles with knobs on the pieces might be a good place to start for a younger child.
Cognitive Skills
Understanding the surrounding world: Children will be able to manipulate the puzzle pieces and develop an understanding of the chain-reactions.
Shape recognition: Many of the puzzles for younger children will be working on recognizing different shapes.
Memory: What a great activity to practice using their memory. Your child will have to remember which pieces they have tried and which ones did not fit.
Problem solving: Your child will need to practice critical thinking to decide where the pieces need to go on the puzzle.
Emotional Skills
Setting goals: Your child will be setting goals as they work on a puzzle. First they decide that they want to accomplish the puzzles then they are making small goals as they devise a strategy to solve the puzzle.
Patience: Working with puzzles can help a child develop patience over time. It takes time to figure out where the pieces need to go. Modeling for you child can be helpful. If they are getting frustrated you may step in and provide guidance or maybe it is time for a break.
Self Esteem: By setting small goals and then having those goals achieved by completing the puzzles can help develop a positive self-esteem. Completing a difficult challenge can help boost a child's self-confidence and will be a building block for helping them overcome other life challenges.
Social Development: Puzzles can provide an opportunity for children to work together to accomplish a set goal. Cooperative play is a great way to build on social development and will help your child succeed in the future.
These personalized name puzzles from BuzyPuzzle are some of my favorites. I love how they work on all the skills mentioned above and also on name recognition. Here is a link if you would like to checkout these puzzles and the many other puzzles that they make: https://rstyle.me/+pf7rBaJoxg3hhhVe2yI7dA
This is such an informative post. Thank you for sharing.
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