Bentley, Jake and Viva all love to do puzzles. This is good because they own more than 40 puzzles. They have wooden puzzles, foam/crepe rubber puzzles, and cardboard puzzles. They have musical puzzles, peg puzzles, magnetic puzzles, small travel-size puzzles, and big floor puzzles. My favorites are the Ravensburger frame puzzles. They are low cost, beautiful, easy to store, and challenging to do.
The children spend some time almost every day working on puzzles. Jake and Viva are very proficient with the younger age peg-style puzzles, but they need a lot of help with 12+ piece jigsaw puzzles. They can do smaller jigsaws, but you don't find a lot of jigsaws with less than 12 pieces.
Bentley can do all but the newest (our first 100 piece) jigsaw puzzle on his own. Last week I gave him a new 43 piece Ravensburger frame puzzle that was quite hard to do--I know because I worked it with him the first time. Ravensburger frame puzzles are wonderful with all the pieces having unique shapes. Bentley did his new puzzle without any help whatsoever the third time he took it out. He is very, very good at puzzling.
The twins will be good at doing puzzles on their own once we work with them enough to give them the needed skills. It takes a fair amount of time and patience from adults to help young children learn to master and enjoy jigsaw puzzles. Two year olds aren't very adept at larger jigsaw puzzles and when they get the puzzle all finished--and you allow yourself a sigh of relief--they turn it over and insist on doing it again. Repetition. Repetition. Fun. Fun.
Jake is starting to be able to put together sections of the 12 piece jigsaws on his own, but Viva isn't as interested. She likes doing it with me, but not on her own. This might be because we haven't any princess puzzles. I bought Viva a 9 piece Dora puzzle and she really liked it.
Most jigsaw puzzles are boy-oriented. Probably half of all children's puzzles are vehicle or dinosaur themed; the rest of them are mostly animal themed, not particularly girl-oriented. I have yet to find a flower puzzle in the children's section. Not that Viva would find flowers compelling in the same way that Bentley and Jake find trains and back hoes and dinosaurs and sharks and lions compelling.
I am working on tracking down some princess puzzles. It's not that easy. I'm not willing...yet...to import Cinderella from Europe. (Perhaps I should go there and buy it?! This might be the perfect excuse I've been looking for to get back to traveling.)
No comments:
Post a Comment