Benefits of Puzzles and Games
Puzzle play is quiet and concentrated. It involves thinking out problems and needs the skills of hands and fingers, and the coordination of hand and eye muscles. It is often solitary play.
Playing with puzzles helps children develop:
- Hand, eye, arm, and body coordination
- Finger and hand muscles
- Problem solving skills
- Discrimination and reasoning
- Patience and perseverance
- Strategies to deal with frustration
Setting up the puzzle area
- Puzzles require a quiet spacious area where children can take their time
Most children will prefer to work on the floor, so a carpeted area is ideal - A low table and chairs can also be used if available
- Puzzles need to be well displayed in an orderly fashion, within easy reach of the children
Provide a range of puzzles
- From one piece to multipiece
- From simple to difficult and challenging
- Showing a wide range of subjects of interest to the children
- With geometric patterns
Children may play with puzzles in the following ways:
- Begin with a haphazard approach, using a ‘hit or miss’ strategy
- Begin to recognise colour, shape and size
- Make deliberate and more accurate movements
- Systematically move to more difficult puzzles
- Demonstrate increased skill and preference for one hand
- Often prefer to work alone
Children can and will make mistakes
Adults can help
- Provide a quiet, comfortable area
- Provide plenty of good quality resources
- Keep the puzzle area tidy, organised and uncluttered
- Take an interest but don't take over
- Talk with children about what they are doing
- Make suggestions about strategies that might help
- Be aware that even skilled children may start with simple puzzles and work their way up to the more complex each time they play
Ideas to help with literacy and numeracy
- All that children learn and experience in this area of play forms a base that contributes to reading, writing and mathematics
- Problem solving here will lead on to an understanding of space, shape, dimension, and number
- Sorting, matching, and arranging sizes, shapes and sequences all help develop pre-reading and pre-maths skills
(Taken from www.lead.ece.govt.nz)