Puzzles are good exercise for your brain.
Puzzles are visual and tactile toys that challenge children to think and solve the “problem.” Puzzles can be made of wood or board, they can be shape sorters, picture puzzles, number or word puzzles.
There are many benefits from playing with puzzles and the best part is, they learn these things while they are busy playing.
Children pick up these skills while doing puzzles:
Fine Motor Development
One of the things that children need to develop is their small muscles. Having strong hand and finger muscles is necessary to hold writing materials such as crayons and pencils. Well-developed small muscles are
therefore necessary for school success.
Playing with puzzles provide opportunity for children to flex those tiny fingers as they manipulate the pieces.
Hand-eye coordination is also practiced while making puzzles. Hand-eye coordination is the way our eye and hand movements and the processing of visual input (in the brain) are coordinated or synchronized to guide reaching and grasping. Example, when the child sees the puzzle, the brain visualises how the puzzle should look like. The hand then should fit the puzzle piece according to how the eyes see it and the brain visualizes it.
A lot of things we need to successfully do in our daily lives need hand-eye coordination like school related tasks, sports, arts, and doing household chores.
Cognitive Development
Puzzles are a great way to help children’s mental ability. One study finds that puzzles build a better brain.
Mathematics
Children need to recognize different shapes, sort and classify them to have some sort of organization as they figure out how to complete the puzzle.
This develops their spatial skills or their ability to mentally manipulate 2-diensional and 3-dimensional figures.
Additionally, a recent study finds that children who play with puzzles are better at spatial transformation task. Spatial skills and puzzles are also linked to improved mathematical ability.
Adaptive, abstract and creative thinkers
Puzzles offer an opportunity to teach children to develop adaptive thinking and become abstract thinkers.
Adaptive thinking is a problem solving strategy. Children who are playing with puzzles need to concentrate as they try to solve the problem, reason and think of a strategy or solution.
These brain-flexing activities also teaches children to think abstractly as they study the puzzle and try to figure out the negative space and the piece that would fit it.
Imagination and creativity are endless with mosaic puzzles.
Language and vocabulary
Children develop their language skills as they describe a puzzle they need to complete their puzzle. As soon as a child completes a puzzle, a vocabulary is introduced and/or reinforced.
Socio- Emotional Development
Playing puzzles should not be a solitary game all the time. Children can collaborate and help each other figure out a puzzle.
Puzzles help children learn to set a goal and complete it. It also teaches them patience and perseverance as puzzles are solved.
Finally, children gain confidence, as they are able to complete puzzles in varying complexities.
These skills are all important to be a successful adult.
As an adult, many tasks need eye-hand coordination and spatial skills. Jobs would always need problem solvers and people who can think abstractly and at the same time creatively.
In addition, more and more studies found that adult success is related to how much patience, resilience and persistence a person has to start and start over a task or a project even after experiencing failure.
These are all life skills that children need to succeed in life and they can all gain them from puzzles!
Happy playing!
Leave a Reply