puzzles

Some Handy Ideas for Kindergarten Readiness: Puzzles

Helping your child with kindergarten readiness doesn’t have to be a puzzle. But puzzles can help with developing skills and brain connections.

Usually puzzles are wood or thick paper pieces with an unlimited variety of pictures. As your child puzzles out how the pieces fit together s/he is practicing:DSCN0710

  • sequencing, patterning, visualizing and visual perception,
  • problem-solving, fine motor coordination, comparing, matching, reasoning
  • figure-ground awareness, goal-setting (finishing the puzzle,) perseverance
  • part-to-whole relationships, emotional control and regulation
  • memory, attention and focusing, patience, and language stimulation

This is just a part of the early learning and fun.
Hands aren’t the only things figuring out how things connect, so do brains. Puzzles or very young children start with only a few pieces and some have knobs on major pieces. More challenging puzzles can include dozens or even hundreds of pieces. This puzzle also encourages learning the alphabet. Playing and learning with puzzles is another great hand learning activity; do you agree?

Kindergarten Readiness – June Bugs For Fun and Learning #5

Helping your child to develop kindergarten readiness doesn’t have to be a puzzle. Did you know that giving your child some puzzles to play with can encourage learning in many ways? Here is just a short list of learning activities with puzzles:

  • problem-solving strategies
  •  fine motor coordination,
  • comparing, matching, reasoning
  • sequencing, patterning,
  • visualizing and visual perception,
  • emotional control and regulation
  • part-to-whole relationships,
  • memory,
  • goal-setting (finishing the puzzle), perseverance
  • figure-ground awareness,
  • attention and focusing,
  •  patience, and language stimulation.

The task of connecting pieces is also happening in the brain, with all kinds of learning connections being made. Puzzles come in easy shapes with only a few pieces to extremely challenging ones with hundreds of pieces. For grown-ups who want to play there are ones with thousands of pieces and 3 dimensions. For both genders and all ages, puzzles can help brain development.

Just a quick walk through the toy store showed some wonderful puzzles all about bugs. Good puzzles can out-last many little hands. Garage sales often have some wonderful puzzles and terrific bargains. Does your child like to play with puzzles?

Readiness for Kindergarten – Play and Learn with Puzzles

There are so many different kinds of puzzles, but today’s post is about jigsaw puzzles, usually wood or thick paper pieces that have to get put together. (Or, there are puzzle resources on line or electronic devices.) As with blocks, puzzles encourage all kinds of learning and kindergarten readiness. On a short list would be such skills as:

  • problem-solving, fine motor coordination, comparing, matching, reasoning
  • sequencing, patterning, visualizing and visual perception,
  • part-to-whole relationships, emotional control and regulation
  • figure-ground awareness, goal-setting (finishing the puzzle,) perseverance
  • memory, attention and focusing, patience, language stimulation

The task of connecting pieces is also happening in the brain, with all kinds of learning connections being made. Puzzles come in easy shapes with only a few pieces to extremely challenging ones with hundreds of pieces. For grown-ups who want to play there are ones with thousands of pieces and 3 dimensions. For both genders and all ages, puzzles can help brain development. Readiness for kindergarten can be quite a puzzle, can’t it?

 

Readiness for Kindergarten – Pumpkins and Puzzles

Pumpkins start with the letter “p”. So do puzzles. Puzzles are a terrific tool for several kindergarten readiness learning skills. Children learn to match the shapes of the pieces to the places where they fit and to look at the pictures and check where they go. Fine motor coordination is needed as kids manipulate and … Continue reading Readiness for Kindergarten – Pumpkins and Puzzles