Puzzles for young children are one of those toys that parents are starting to forget about or overlook. There are all these pieces, and they can make a mess, but from a developmental standpoint, puzzles are amazing for young children.
Puzzles for young children are one of the best ways to develop their hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and visual spatial skills. They are enticing and enthralling when the puzzle is developmentally the correct one for a child and they have the skills to do the puzzle, but it is still just challenging enough to be interesting. This means that different types and difficulties of puzzle will appeal to different ages of children. Let’s look at the progression of puzzles for young children and what puzzles will be best for different ages, while remembering that all children are different and develop at their own pace.
Puzzles for One-Year-Olds – The Bangers
One-year-olds will most likely start by banging puzzle pieces together and trying to put them in their mouth. They may dump all the pieces on the floor or throw them everywhere. Sturdy wooden pieces are best for this age. They may bring the pieces one by one to an adult to identify the picture. They may line all the pieces up on a table or pretend they are food in a play kitchen. Puzzles with large wooden knobs for pudgy hands that only have 3 to 8 pieces will be best. As one-year-olds get closer to two, they may start putting the puzzle pieces back into the puzzles, if it is modeled for them several times.
Parents can sit down and help their children complete the puzzles by using a hand-over-hand technique to show them how to rotate a puzzle piece. They can also use verbal prompts to direct a child to what they should be looking for or to remind them to turn the piece. It is best to start with puzzles with only 3 to 4 pieces. Having four pieces in a line or just one piece per small puzzle may be easier for some young children, but others may gravitate towards the animals with bright primary colors. Puzzles that make animal sounds will also be appealing to many older one-year-olds and help them learn the sounds themselves.
Puzzles for Two-Year-Olds – The Magicians
Two-year-olds have this magic ability to make sudden unexpected jumps in development where they go from hardly being able to do something to mastering it seemingly overnight. They may ignore puzzles for weeks or months, only to sit down one afternoon for two hours with a single puzzle and work at it over and over till they have mastered it, then never spend any time with it again. Two-year-olds also have a vast range of abilities where some of them may still be better suited for the puzzles recommended for one-year-olds and some may be ready for the puzzles I will recommend for three-year-olds.
Most two-year-olds will be ready for small pegs or chunky wooden puzzle pieces rather than the larger knobs for young toddlers. Sound puzzles will appeal to many as will puzzles about vehicles. A puzzle is a concrete way to learn basic shapes and a personalized name puzzle can introduce a child to the letters in their name and help them learn their full name. Some basic puzzles where you have to figure out how the parts go together is a great introduction to harder puzzles and two-year-olds may need modeling to figure them out at first. Layered matching puzzles reinforce colors and matching.
Puzzles for Three-Year-Olds – The Masters of Disguise
Three-year-olds love to play dress up and pretend. One day they are pretending to be dinosaurs. The next day they may set up an elaborate farm scenario where they are the farmer and need to feed all the animals. Developmentally they are perfecting their fine motor skills through play to be able to start learning how to write. They are perfecting their visual spatial skills for reading, writing, and mathematics. Puzzles can help with both of these developments. Three-year-olds are on the verge of being ready for academics, sports, and so much more, but they aren’t quite there yet. All of their learning is done through play at this age and providing them a rich environment for play will facilitate their learning.
Three-year-olds will be ready for puzzles with pieces that need to be fit together, counting puzzles, and more advanced shape puzzles. They can have fun learning size vocabulary with this shape puzzle and practicing counting with this barn puzzle. They will love singing The Wheels on the Bus and learning about life cycles of caterpillars. As they become more comfortable putting pieces together, they can start to move on to floor puzzles. Puzzles for young children are wonderful for teaching a wide variety of concepts and skills.
Happy Puzzling!
Check out our other posts:
How to Encourage Inside Movement with Preschoolers – hummingbirdhomelife.com
How to Make My Backyard Better for Preschoolers – hummingbirdhomelife.com
Engaging Daily Activities for 2-Year-Olds – hummingbirdhomelife.com
24 Joyful and Engaging Books for 1 Year Olds – hummingbirdhomelife.com
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