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| Alphabet wooden puzzle |
I’ve never taken a liking or interest for puzzles or chess,
or any thinking games. No one has ever told me that I should, or showed to me
that puzzles are fun, or has educational benefits, or can make a person
smarter. From what I can see, puzzles are anything but fun. How can arranging
things to make a picture seem fun? (That alone should show you how I suck at organizing
and arranging stuff. Yikes.)
But that all changed when I became a parent myself. You know
how a mom always wants the best for her child? I thought “I can’t let my child
become a dumb-ass like me!” or somewhere along those lines. I knew that play is
a child’s work, so I started researching on smart and educational play. I mean,
why let them merely play, when they can play and learn and become smarter
individuals at the same time? You know, kill ten birds at one time. Moms are
nothing but time-saving, efficient multi-taskers.
I started exposing my kids to puzzles from they were about a
year old. I bought 2-3 pieces large puzzles of animal pictures for my daughter
to assemble. At first she doesn’t know how to match the head of the animals and
their bodies. I’d have to show her which is the cat’s head and its body, the
fish’s head and its body, and so on. But after several attempts, she seemed to
catch on. She would try and match the heads and bodies and see if they fit.
Then when it doesn’t, she takes another piece and tries to fit it, until she
finds a perfect match. It’s amazing to see a child that young being able to
match something correctly. These all happened before I started researching on
the benefits of puzzles.
Physical benefits
Young children are learning and developing fine motor
skills, meaning the ability to make small or fine, controlled movements.
Puzzles are a fun way to improve their motor skills i.e. the ability to pinch,
pick up and grasp small items which are important for writing later on. You
know how babies and young toddlers are always picking up small items on the
floor such as buttons, coins, dust particles and leftover foods? Yeah, that’s
gross motor skills in action. Puzzles are a much cleaner and safer way to
learn, don’t you think?
Another physical benefit apparent in playing with puzzles is
the hand eye coordination, which involves the coordinated vision and hand
movement to execute a task. We as adults may not think twice when picking up
something or writing with a pen, but a young child has to learn to do this.
When assembling a puzzle, the child places each piece in the puzzle and
manipulating it to see if it fits. This trial and error process is also
enhancing the hand eye coordination.
Intellectual benefits
Puzzles are a way of stimulating the thinking side of a
child’s brain, focusing on problem solving and reasoning skills such as process
and logical thinking. As your child tries to fit and match the puzzles, they
realize that there several ways to attack a problem and experiment with ways
that works best for him.
Puzzles also improve a child’s cognitive skills, i.e.
learning to understand how the small puzzle pieces fit together to form a
complete puzzle set. Depending on the puzzle theme, they’re also learning specific
subjects such as alphabets, numbers, animals and colours, among many others.
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| My daughter arranging puzzles on her own. |
Emotional and social benefits
You know how it feels to accomplish something? How
satisfying that feels? Children feel that too. You can see how absorbed and
determined they are, trying to fit them together until they match. And when
they finally finish the puzzle, they clap and cheer to acknowledge that sense
of achievement. The accomplishment and the praise by the audience (adoring
parents, of course) increase self confidence.
Puzzles are the one of the best family or social games
around, just like card and board games such as Monopoly and Uno. Fitting a
puzzle requires cooperation and thinking as a group, which is also a great
bonding tool. As parents guide their children on matching the puzzle pieces,
they could also encourage them to try again when the child gets it wrong,
encourage them not to give up and think around the problem, teach them how to
handle frustration. Quality time with your kids, and learning so many things at
the same time. That certainly beats your child hogging your Ipad playing Angry
Birds for hours.
So
keeping in mind all these benefits, it’s about time that you start buying some
puzzles for your kids, don’t you think? ;)
