7 Benefits of Playing Puzzles in Early Childhood

Playing Puzzles is one of my game resources for young children. Puzzles come in all shapes and sizes, and vary in difficulty, making them suitable for all ages, even adults.

Playing puzzles is excellent for toddler development and is often used during preschool and kindergarten. Playing puzzles can develop many skills, making it the perfect educational play activity during the early years.

Here are 7 benefits of playing puzzles in early childhood and their explanations

1) Train Visual Perception

When children play puzzles, their eyes see the shapes, pictures, and shapes on the pieces and this information is sent to the brain to interpret it. This is called visual perception. Without visual skills, you won't know or understand why two parts need to be connected, or how they become part of a bigger picture.

2) Develop Fine Motor Skills

Playing Puzzles is an excellent tool for developing fine motor skills. When children handle small pieces, they strengthen their finger muscles. They have to pick it up, twist it and hold it carefully to hold it together, which requires fine control.

As with other fine motor activities, make sure the size of the toy is appropriate for the child's age and development. Younger children need to practice with larger puzzle pieces before they can learn to handle smaller puzzle pieces.

3) Develop Gross Motor Skills

Because children need to move their bodies while building a puzzle, they strengthen larger muscles. Stretching to pick up a piece to the child's left or right, or to get it into position by leaning against the center of the body, is great for learning to cross the midline.

4) Practicing Eye-Hand Coordination

Hand-eye coordination is the ability of the hands and eyes to work together to function and perform a task, such as catching a ball or tying shoelaces. Playing puzzles from an early age is a simple way to build hand-eye coordination and develop a child's visual-motor integration, which is also an important skill for learning to write.

5) Understand Geometry Shapes

While playing puzzles, children learn to see patterns and shapes, both in pieces and in whole images. Shape recognition is an important aspect of geometry, and patterns can be found in almost any mathematical concept.

6) Train the Brain Focus

Have you ever noticed that when a child is playing a puzzle, they sit still for a few minutes longer than usual and they seem confused about what they are doing?

This activity is great for getting a child to focus all their attention, without being distracted, and is one that can slowly train a child to concentrate for longer and longer periods. A puzzle, however, is not complete until every piece has been created. This creates motivation for a child to keep going all the way to completion, along with a sense of accomplishment.

7) Practice Solving Problems

Playing Puzzles makes kids think hard. Although the puzzle game is just a puzzle and picture-matching skill. The activity needs to be thought out–in a logical way, through trial and error, or by matching colors, shapes, patterns, etc. Teaching children about problem-solving should take place during play, giving them plenty of opportunities to practice these skills.

This is an article about the 7 benefits of playing puzzles in early childhood, if you have questions, please write them in the comments column below.