Puzzles

Posted by Rebecca Haden on Thursday, July 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment

We are so used to seeing puzzles in every early childhood and elementary classroom — and the hip secondary level classrooms, too – that we might just take them for granted.

We shouldn’t.

Puzzles help with manual dexterity, problem solving, visual/spatial intelligence development, and concentration. They exercise the brain at all ages, and allow us to bring content into the classroom in a light-hearted way that makes difficult subjects palatable.

Stacking and nesting toys might be thought of as precursors to puzzles, since they are all about dexterity, but for babies and toddlers, figuring out where to put the pieces to make them fit together is part of the stacking and nesting experience, and making the peg fit the hole is part of the pegboard experience. Those sound like puzzle skills, don’t they?

The pounding and throwing are just extra fun.

Then we move on to the familiar tray puzzles. These are puzzles which have pieces that fit into a tray of cardboard or wood.

For home use, if you have only one child and plan on only one child, cardboard trays are fine. For older kids, too, cardboard trays are sturdy enough — we see them in map puzzles. That age group does so little chewing that cardboard lasts a long time.

For the early childhood classroom, you are better off with wooden tray puzzles. The cost over the long term of replacing the cheap cardboard ones every few months is greater than the cost of buying good wooden ones in the first place.

Here are some tray puzzles we like:

Melissa & Doug USA Map in bright colors has lots of extra info on the pieces.
Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden 48-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle – Pirates is just one of many good tray puzzles in this series. The quality is high and the price is reasonable.
My Favorite Aleph Bet Tray Puzzle 24pc is part of a series of inexpensive tray puzzles. This one presents the Hebrew alphabet, and illustrates what we like about this series: it covers topics you won’t always find from the larger brands.
Ocean Tray Puzzle by Crocodile Creek, 20 piece is part of a series of animal puzzles. Crocodile Creek has some of the nicest artwork you’ll find in early childhood puzzles.

In buying puzzles, you’ll notice differences in quality in terms of sturdiness. You will also notice a difference in the quality of the art work, and in the teaching value. All tray puzzles let students work on their problem solving and spacial skills, but it is great to be able to use them for introducing colors, the alphabet, and so on. Good wooden puzzles have an advantage in that the pieces are a good, grippable size for using as manipulatives, and their parts won’t break off the way the cardboard ones do when they are used for other kinds of play. This makes your investment go further.

The next level of complexity in puzzles is the jigsaw puzzle: there is no tray, and the pieces aren’t complete objects in and of themselves. This requires a higher level of cognitive processing, as well as greater dexterity. The first jigsaw puzzle choice might be a floor puzzle. These are different from other jigsaw puzzles only in size. Most of them end up about 5′ square. That’s why you have to do them on the floor.

Some of our favorite floor puzzles have good content connections, too:

Melissa & Doug Underwater 48-Piece Floor Puzzle
Melissa & Doug Solar System 48 pcs Floor Puzzle
Melissa & Doug Children of the World Floor 48-Piece Floor Puzzle
Mudpuppy Where The Wild Things Are Floor Puzzle
Sea Life Floor Puzzle from Ravensburger
Vehicle Floor Puzzle, 36 Pieces from Crocodile Creek

The pieces are big, so they are easier to manipulate,and several children can work on them at once, which makes them great for the classroom and for families and play dates, too.

Ordinary jigsaw puzzles are fun for older kids, and come in levels of complexity from 35 or 48 pieces to 1000 pieces or more. The more pieces, the more complex and the more difficult the puzzle. Setting one up in a corner of the classroom for early finishers can be a great classroom tradition, and there are so many choices that you’re sure to find one to fit your classroom theme.

Beyond this come the logical/spatial puzzles, both the brainteaser pencil and paper type and the physical ones like ThinkFun Rush Hour. Thinkfun has several lesson plans at their website that you can download in order to get the most out of their puzzles in the classroom.

You can also find some sophisticated puzzles of this type online at BurrPuzzles from IBM. I think this link is for you, though, when you need a break. Your students probably want the physical object. G4G4 is another great link for those who are interested in topology, which is what you call it when the puzzles get really complicated. That last site will take you to many geometry and topology sites, both fun and serious, and get you right into the fourth dimension.

Puzzles such as Sudoku, Kakuro, and crosswords do not belong in this discussion because they are not about space, but are more conceptual.

Still, I am including a link to many conceptual math puzzles here just because the host of that page suggests discussing them at the dinner table. I love the idea of giving kids a good thought puzzle to take home to their family dinner table for homework.

Here are some of our favorite choices in logical/spatial puzzles for the classroom:

Educo Double Bubble Wire Maze is a brainteaser for preschool or kindergarten. Let the little ones explore it, or add a dimension by saying, “Now move the red one” and otherwise adding directions to the process. Educo Original Supermaze is big enough for several kids to play with at once.
Rubik’s Cube is available again. Rubik’s TouchCube is an electronic version.
Think fun Visual Brainstorms presents thought experiments, brainteasers, and interesting points for discussion.
ThinkFun Block By Block is a great visual-spatial challenge. Think fun Brick by Brick is similar; we find it a little easier. Both give you a bunch of pieces, and cards showing shapes. Your challenge is to build the pictured shapes with the pieces you have. Put these in your center area.
MindWare Noodlers Puzzle Box has 80 spatial puzzles in a tidy box.
DaVinci’s Challenge Game is a very good spatial skills game for two players. The board is beautiful, and players can quickly grasp the rules and spend a long time mastering the strategy.