Wooden puzzles are a great way to teach your kids (even babies) a whole a lot of new skills. Besides being one of the sturdiest and most eco-friendly puzzle options in the world, with wooden baby puzzle toys, you can teach even your littlest one to develop his/her fine motor skills from an early age while being able to recognize shapes and colours. The range of wooden puzzles available on the market is huge, and so is the list of benefits.
The most common struggle parents have with little children is the attention. When still little, parents find it extremely difficult to have their attention even for a minute, which is usually a common thing in children of young age. According to experts, children under the age of 3 can concentrate for about 2-3 minutes. Kids at 3, can concentrate around 6-15 minutes while those of 4 years of age can keep their attention at one thing for about 8-20 minutes. So, if this is something that bothers you really hard, you can start making changes by introducing your little one with wooden puzzles.
When talking about babies, wooden baby puzzle toys with lots of colours, cartoon and animal characters would be the ideal option for keeping them occupied. These puzzles will help your baby to focus on one thing for a longer period of time as they will want to complete the puzzle and place the pieces to their place. In other words, choosing age-appropriate puzzle is the ideal way to keep the focus of your children. For babies around one year of age you can opt for knobbed puzzles with only few pieces (this could be flowers, vegetables, fruit, animals, cartoon character, truck, etc.). For a 3-year-old kids, you can opt for a 16 - 20 pieces jigsaw puzzle and for older children you can always pick a more difficult puzzle with more pieces. Once your kid builds their skills, you can gradually try to decrease your intervention.
Spatial Awareness
No matter how big or small the puzzle is, and no matter the size of the pieces thanks to them, children can learn to distinguish the difference between different puzzle sizes. According to experts, when solving a puzzle, spatial perception comes into play, so children learn to identify which pieces will fit together by analyzing their colour, shape and size. The ideal and fastest way to help your children develop spatial skills is by playing with them and using the spatial words like look bellow, under, next to, besides, turn, above, outside, left, right, etc.
Fine Motor Skills
As we already mentioned, one of the first things children learn through wooden puzzles is to develop their fine motor skills. Since children, especially when still babies struggle to grasp at a small toy and hold it in the hand for about one minute, playing with puzzles can help them precisely this, to learn how to grasp and hold a toy. Since this ability involves the movement of the fingers, wrist, hand, feet and toes this is also a good exercise for their body as well. A thing to have in mind is that it can take some time for babies to develop their fine motor skills but wooden puzzles will surely speed up the process. The more your baby starts holding things in hands, the faster he will start to be able to control and play with them.
Problem-Solving Skills
The 'problem' that comes with a jigsaw puzzle is that all pieces are mixed up, and your little one should organise and assemble them the right way. This game or toy, in fact, is the ideal way to help your kid deal with such situations, situations when he can find the solution without feeling stressed or overwhelmed by the situation. Now, if your kid is a toddler, you should help him out at the beginning of this game. You can start by telling him to turn all of the pieces over so that the picture side of the pieces is faced up. The second thing you can do is to show your kids how to identify the edge pieces, and once done, help him out to put the puzzle together. The help is essential in the beginning, otherwise, they can feel lost and helpless.
Memory
Last but not least, puzzles can keep the mind of your kid active and working. In other words, puzzles are great in improving their brain and memory as after a while they will gain practice and will start locating the pieces with more ease.