Why Jigsaw puzzles are amazing for children’s learning?
Playing with puzzles has a significant impact on children’s learning and development. Puzzles are a crucial part of early childhood, developing many skills and engaging children in educational play.
Puzzles are an excellent tool for developing fine motor skills. As children handle the pieces, they strengthen the small muscles in their fingers which will support their ability to write, draw and even learn to play instruments. Children have to pick up the pieces, turn them and manipulate them into the correct slots. Through grasping pieces and matching them together, children improve their spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination. This is the ability to coordinate what the eyes see with what the hands do.
There are also lots of cognitive benefits to playing with puzzles. One of which is that it allows children to develop their reasoning and decision making skills, both of which are valuable throughout their lives. The use of puzzles also helps children to become more confident and determined. As they persevere to complete a puzzle they are rewarded with a sense of achievement. The satisfaction of putting the final piece of a puzzle into place is timeless!
When children build puzzles, they are developing their visual perception. This is where their eyes are seeing the shapes, images and forms on the pieces and sending messages to the brain to interpret. Without this skill, you would not know or understand why two pieces should connect, or how they form a part of the bigger picture. Visual perception is important for learning to read and write, which makes building puzzles a great early literacy and prewriting activity.
Puzzle building supports many areas of visual perception including:
Visual memory – The ability to remember what is seen.
Visual discrimination – Seeing similarities and differences in things.
Visual comprehension – Making sense of what you see.
Perception of shapes – Recognizing common shapes.
Visual analysis and synthesis – Seeing patterns and putting them together.
Visual closure – The ability to identify what an object is by seeing part of it
During puzzle play, children are developing their early maths skills. They learn to see pattern and shapes in the pieces as well as in the complete picture. Shape recognition is an important aspect of geometry, patterns can be found in almost all mathematical concepts. Children develop the skill of trial and error, when a puzzle piece doesn’t fit, they try somewhere else. Trial and error are important skills for problem solving and critical thinking.
Puzzles make children think hard, they encourage independent learning and decision making. They also prompt social interactions where an adult might use the puzzle as a focal point for discussion. Children use their observational skills to ask and answer questions.
Selecting puzzles which reflect a child’s interests also helps with the acquisition of knowledge through subliminal learning. The child’s sub conscious mind is absorbing information without being aware of it. Themed puzzles benefit children at different stages of development, for example if they are learning shapes, colour, letters or numbers, specific puzzles can enhance the learning experience.
Ultimately, the most important thing is the fun involved in playing with puzzles! Children enjoy learning the most when they are having fun, and playing with puzzles that are engaging is just one example of ‘learning made fun’!
