I am the one in our home who is primarily responsible for the children's love of jigsaw puzzles. Matt has done a few puzzles with the kidlets, too, but not nearly as many as I have. This might lead you to believe that I have a great love for jigsaw puzzles. I don't. I enjoy doing a good jigsaw puzzle now and then, but only if I am working on it with someone else. I probably went an entire decade without doing a jigsaw puzzle before Bentley was born.
Why did I want the children to love jigsaw puzzles? I think they are great brain building tools. Who doesn't want their child or grandchild to have a great brain?!
For the twins' birthday I bought them each a 100 piece puzzle. I had told myself I would not purchase more puzzles because we have quite a few, but then I saw these simply delightful and perfectly themed puzzles at the toy store.
Viva put hers together just a few days after her birthday. When Jake did his a week later, she informed him that "You should have done your puzzle when I did mine!"
Jake was so enamored of the knight and dragons on his puzzle that after finishing it, he immediately tore it apart and did it again.
Both twins can do their 100 piece puzzle in under an hour. I help them sort the pieces into two piles, border pieces and inner pieces. I stick around while they piece the border giving them a few hints if needed and then they do the rest of the puzzle by themself. They insist on it.
At the same time I purchased the twins' birthday puzzles, I bought yet another dinosaur puzzle, a 400 piece. It was labeled a family puzzle and had pieces in three different sizes. I gave it to Bentley when Jake started his puzzle.
Bentley recruited his great-grandma to do the puzzle with him and I also helped. It took us a little more than three hours working together to piece it. When I purchased it, I envisioned all three kids working on it together, but I think we might have to wait another year or two. It was not an easy puzzle. Our master puzzler, B boy, got burned out the last half hour. He stayed at the table supervising great-grandma and I (to make sure we stayed on task), but he quit putting in pieces. The brown dinosaur in the lower right corner was very hard to piece. I tried, B tried, I tried again. I saved it for last. I was convinced more than once that we were missing pieces of it. We weren't.
Isn't it an awesome puzzle? It is sold by Cobble Hill. The twins' puzzles are sold by Crocodile Creek. They are very nice puzzles, although not quite as high quality as Ravensburger puzzles.
P.S.S. Here are two more puzzle photos that I didn't get around to posting in a timely manner. The boys were playing with their Easter puzzles last month and created these cool puzzle scapes. (Viva was, of course, off doing her own thing.)
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