Did/does your toddler like puzzles? Dd wants to like them...but she has not figured out how to work on them. I am struggling with teaching her how to "do" a puzzle. I have tried explaining the flat sides go around the edges, and I have told her to look at the box to get ideas of what the picture should look like when it is complete...but she doesn't quite get it. She loves trying, but I am hoping for some success before she gets frustrated...any tips?

LOL -- this is one HG+ thing that ds6 did/does *not* do. He's not a puzzler!

I've read, though, that many GT kids who are puzzlers have their own methods -- they don't start at the edges like many adults do. I'd just let her go at it, or work with her, but not try to enforce your way of puzzle-completion; they do best figuring out their own ways.

Or maybe she's just not a puzzler! Nothing wrong with that.

Ditto Mia- My daughter has NEVER liked puzzles. I thought maybe getting her some American Girl puzzles for Christmas would "spark" some interest and nope, nothing!! Oh, well, I guess puzzles aren't for everyone!

oneisenough- When my dd was little I would try to get her to do puzzles the same way you are doing, to no avail! Sorry, I wish I could help more. I think Mia is right though, some people have their own method of putting them together.

Laura

Both of my boys loved puzzles and were really good at them in young age but they didn't really care about the edges either. It took a while before they started building puzzles from edges up.

If you have a small enough puzzle (50 pieces and less) edges don't matter that much. Perhaps that was their reasoning, perhaps they saw pieces which belonged together and that's all that mattered or they were simply not ready for such concept.

Let your daughter built whatever way she wants to. You may try to build most of the puzzle for her and ask her to put in the last few pieces. May be that will interest her if not put it aside for a few months and try again later on.

At our house, it is three kids, three different approaches to puzzles (but not one of them did/does the edges first!):

Harpo was brilliant at them very early (200 piece ones he'd never seen before, done completely solo, at age 2), but he had the strangest way of doing them--he'd do them left to right in a row straight across one row at a time, then "carriage return", like a typewriter, back to the left edge, then another row straight across again, then "carriage return," etc., until it was done.

Groucho liked piling up the puzzle boxes and making forts out of them! He's my action man, and had/has no interest at all in sitting there sticking little bits of cardboard together, thank you. He likes building things (for example, he has a little woodworking kit he loves), but doesn't see any point in anything with no practical application.

Chico is also very good at puzzles (similar size and complexity to Harpo, but at age 3, rather than 2); he does them in what I consider a more "normal" way (i.e. the way I like to do them myself )--he sorts the bits into groups--all the castle pieces in this pile, all the horse bits in that pile, all the knight bits in this pile, etc., then builds one bit at a time, and then links the bits at the end. The Ravensburger puzzles seem very well-suited to this approach--there are lots of individual "chunks" in most of those puzzles, without lots of overlapping or "dead" background space.

It's fun to watch, isn't it? Have a good time with your little one!

peace
minnie

DD is doing puzzles and I tried the whole edge concept and corner pieces and to no avail... she likes to start in the middle. She understands the idea of the outer edge and when she gets to the corner piece or the edge she will tell me what it is but doing it first doesn't interest her.

I can say this. I have found that the wooden puzzles from Melissa and Doug are her favorite and they come in a wooden trays so I think that helped. And I am not sure if Tuesday Morning is a national chain or regional but if you have one near you see if they have the puzzles because I found them at the store for half price.

Also I talked about and showed her the importance of the picture and aligning it. So I showed her the trick of holding the piece over the others and comparing the image looking at colors and patterns. Once I showed her that it was a light went off and she had no problem doing the puzzle. She will still have it turned wrong on occasion so I have to say turn it and no problem. And I really think she could do it just fine with out my comments but I would probably need duct tape to stop that one!

My two youngest girls both love puzzles, still do. DD4 had a strange way on putting them together too. both started at about 18 months , but the younger one would put random pieces of the puzzle in, no order at all, she would just pick up a piece put it down and thats where the piece would go. I have video of it and it still looks strange to me. I think they all just go at thier own pace whatever that may be. For example my girls wouldn't even look at lego's had no ideal what to do with them, then recently we went to legoland and now they've brought all the lego's out they received for Christmas's and birthday's and now I have masterpeices around the house. LOL

Same with my DS4. I never could figure out why he wasn't into puzzles, as everything else was very typically HG+ activities. When I did the Ruf scales on him when he was younger, it was always the one thing that he wasn't quite up to par on. He does still like them, but is not great at jigsaw puzzles. But actually recently he started doing puzzles on jigzone and he likes that.

Funny puzzle story, last night DH was watching some news show while he was playing sequence with DS and President Obama was on the screen. DS turns around and says "hey, I just did a 36 piece puzzle of him on jigzone earlier today where he had a microphone in his hand and his thumb was up" I laughed and said "do you know who that is?" he says "yes, Barack Obama"

You know, I always tried to show my DS4 how to do the edges first. Thanks for the reminder that they do things their own way. I guess I should have known that based on how he does everything else, but I will just let him do it however he does it next time. He does like jigzone.com, he can just piece it together however he wants. Plus he gets annoyed sometimes with real puzzles because he knocks the side and then a bunch of pieces move . That doesn't happen on the computer I guess.

What kind of puzzles interest her?

-# of pieces?
- wood , cardboard or other material?
- characters/familiar images, patterns, animals?
-3D, flat, ...

As suggested, some of the M&D wood puzzles (that have the pictures printed underneath on the tray) are a good way to ease into puzzles.

Shellymos - my DS5 is the same. He had little interest in regular jigsaw puzzles, but he always like the online versions. I remember when he was a toddler he liked the thomas the tank engine puzzles: thomas puzzles and games

I teach all of mine to match the colors. Melissa and Doug have "floor puzzles" that start at 24 pieces. I don't worry about edges, they figure that out later. Just have your child look for the two purple pieces etc. They catch on pretty quick, gifties and NDs.

Oh I hated, hated, hated, puzzles when I was a kid! Everyone was always trying to get me to do puzzles, but I just did not have the patience for it. It is funny because DD loves puzzles. I will do them now with her, but I still loose interest before her.

DD started doing the wooden knob puzzles as a baby and before we knew it she was doing real puzzles. I thought it was so amazing to watch her. She just takes a random piece puts it down and gets another. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how she dose it.

It is interesting when she was under two she would do them upside down. It did not seem to matter which way they were facing. Also now she will do like 10, 100 or 200 piece puzzles in a row, but will very rarely do the 1000-1500 piece puzzles unless there is a group of us working on it and it is something with princesses or castles.

She fills our kitchen with large floor puzzles and our table with little puzzles. She always wants me to take pictures of her puzzles before I can take them apart. I found myself sweeping the puzzles the other day because they were covering the floor for like 3 days, and I thought this is just odd. If anyone stopped by, I would just say she really likes puzzles.

If you really want her to do them, have the adults do a really cool one and if she joins in great. My husbands family really turned me onto puzzles over the years.

Ds8 was always a good puzzler, I don't remember having to show him much, but I did work the puzzles with him often. He still enjoys I Spy books and Where's Waldo - the sort of 'find little bits with your eyes' games which have always excited him.

DD2.5 is good at puzzles too, but not quite as instinctive as her brother. When starting on the wooden tray puzzles I would encourage her to keep trying by telling her to 'turn it, turn it, turn it...' just a little chant so she'd get that it was an ongoing thing - you don't just try once or twice and give up.
On the flat puzzles, she engages when we are working on an interesting part like a character face/eyes/nose, but then sort of wanders off while I 'finish up' the border (boring!) parts.

Actually, that's sort of my preferred mode too...

Well DD19mo may be a little more into puzzles. She is great at the peg ones and got into them pretty early. She also is great at the shape sorter ones. Haven't tried any jigsaw ones, but I will have to do that sometime and see what she thinks.

The only puzzles my son liked were word puzzles. He never wanted to do jigsaw puzzles but would occasionally do them online.

Our DS4 liked puzzles starting at around age 2. To this day, though, he still doesn't do them edge first. In fact, I have the hardest time getting him to pay attention even to the picture. He seems to look only at the shape of the pieces and then find the ones that fit together. To be honest, I have no idea how he manages to do this. What is clear, though, is that A) he likes them and B) he likes to do them his own way. Early on you can help by surreptitiously putting some relevant pictures nearby so that things work out.

BB

I wonder if this is like my DS7's crazy ability to spot 4-leafed clovers, BBDad.

The kid collected something like 75 (?) 4- and even 5-leaf clovers one year a couple of years ago. We have them pressed in our dictionary. I don't know how he did it. It's not that our yard has any more of them than anywhere else. Several times he and I looked at the same spot of clover starting at the same moment, and within seconds, he's spotted one and I have not. Sometimes he'd spot 2 or 3 and I still wouldn't have seen one. Same patch of clover.

It's a weird talent, but it clearly is a talent!

I asked my son how he was able to do this, and he couldn't tell me. It just seemed to be part of the package with him. I don't know if he can still do it. He wasn't as into it this past summer, and I never asked him to look. But it was sure uncanny at the time!

ooohh... I think you should see if he can find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow next. I, myself, am still looking.

Kriston, he is probably secretly Irish (if not out and out irish

I was wondering the same about that 'I spy' ability to find things, I figure it's got to help with puzzling...actually dd is very quick with that as well.

This is pretty far 'ot', but I was reminded of this odd story: my PG brother was working on a fishing boat post college, pre grad school and was working nets with some other men in low light. He was doing fine, so someone asked how long he'd been doing it and he responded just a few days. Then out of the blue they asked if he was color blind. He was kind of floored. He is color blind but usually it's not at all obvious to other people. The co-worker said he'd known one other person really who just took to bringing in the nets in low light, also color blind. Seems they just had better vision for that particular task under those conditions than most other folks. Really interesting to me. Never thought color blindness had any benefits, but I guess a lot of 'differences' have their up-sides!
I suppose his gtness probably didn't hurt either in finding efficiencies not obvious to others. <--- maybe that *is* on topic.

This excited me, BBDad, because my late dad is the only other person I've known who did this! He'd do puzzles of several thousand pieces and never, ever look at the picture--he sorted all the pieces by shape first, and then off to the races...which drove my mum goofy, as she is a colour-first puzzler--but between the two of them, they did lots of puzzles together every year. (One year, I found one that was all white--he loved it!)

We always started a great big one together on Boxing Day...sorry, irrelevant trip down memory lane here...but I still get a little misty when something reminds me of my much-missed Pop.

Cherish your little shape-sorter!

peace
minnie

DS7 has always loved the "I Spy" and "Where's Waldo" books, too. And his strength according to testing is pattern recognition. So there you go, I guess...

I don't really know how he works puzzles, but he also doesn't do edges first.

LOL. That's a good one Dottie.

One, we have many of those wooden "Melissa and David" puzzles, which DD 25 mos. adores and totally nails without mistakes.

I got her a large scale, 25 piece dinosaur jigsaw puzzle for this year and the whole jigsaw thing does not appeal to her nearly as much as the fascinating creatures depicted on the puzzle. She can look at a solitary piece and find its image on the small picture of the puzzle, but she has no plans of assemling it herself.

I think she thinks it's a poorly constructed or otherwise broken rug: she cannot wait to stand on it when I'm putting it together on the floor.

My mother tells me I was a puzzle freak, but never jigsaw.

Oops. DD begged to do the puzzles again and, when she got to the 9 piece jigsaw puzzle I said, "That one is too hard for you." No it's not, she said. "It's too hard: it's a jigsaw puzzle," I said. No, it's a *train* puzzle, she said. Anyway, she did it swiftly. I opened up the large-scale 25 piece dinosaur jigsaw puzzle again and she could do that, too, all by photo pattern recognition with the "map." I stand corrected (by my toddler).

seablue: Do you find that almost overnight she has a mental growth? I hope that makes sense but I really don't know how else to describe it. DD's play seems to be even more intense here lately and shows even more cognitive understanding on her part. Yesterday it was her usual imaginary play but today it was to a whole new level.

My DS5 enjoys puzzles but is not an avid puzzler. In part I think I didn't expose him to puzzles all that often b/c I'm not wild about puzzles myself. It is funny though about trying to teach approaches to puzzling. I definitely encourage DS to "sort" his puzzles, finding corners, edges, parts of the picture, etc. I should probably just leave him alone!

It's funny too b/c when he was tested recently the psychologist said he did something she's never seen a child do before. During the puzzles section on the WPPSI, when he got to the last puzzle, he was moving pieces around. After a minute, he got frustrated and just flipped all the pieces over to the white side with no picture, then quickly put the puzzle together and flipped it back over, all in one piece. She was really suprised, since she'd never seen a child do that before and she said she was also surprised that it worked! I guess there are all kinds of ways to do a puzzle!

DS5 does LOVE, LOVE Legos, which I suppose are kind of a 3D puzzle.

KatelynsMom, I often think of you and how you describe Katelyn... yes, there is a lot of mental growth (and her legs grew!) at 25 mos. DH and I are having some trouble characterizing it. It doesn't seem to be easily quantifiable like how many words can she say sort of thing.

I called a preschool to discuss enrollment and was discouraged to learn that DD will not be allowed into most 3 year old preschool classes until Sept. 2010, when she'll be nearly four, since she's a December baby. They mentioned the jump from "parallel play to cooperative play." Well, she's in full cooperative mode.

Last week we went to the bank and DD made a bee-line to another toddler who was there with her parents. "Hi, what's your name? Want to see my baby doll?" she said. They sang the alphabet song together and took off exploring the bank while everyone in the building watched. At one point, the other little girl, age 3.5, said, "She's not sharing" so we patiently explained that DD 25 mos. is still young and does not have any siblings to share with. DD looked at me, looked at the little girl and said, "Oh. I'll share. Here you go, would you like this?" and proceeded to play the rest of the time in full share mode.

So that's what we really see, I guess, interpersonal stuff, imagination, playing make-believe for hours, scary memory, and making logical connections. Am I making any sense?

My DD is 29mo now and in the last few months it's been the same thing- she's made these intangible leaps. I'm not sure what "normal" is at this age, but her imaginative play has also taken off and she mostly just needs an explanation to get her to do something she doesn't want to- as opposed to the tantrums she was having when thwarted. But, really, it's not so much the things she does as the things she suddenly understands and the questions she asks. She's been on this kick where she's really interested in what can live in water and what can't, constant questions about can people live in water, can our dog live in water, etc. (Yesterday she got mad at DS4 and DS7 and yelled "Brothers, you *both* live underwater!" like it was an insult, lol). She asked why we can't see the moon and stars when the sun is out and then was fascinated that our sun was a star too. Weird, crazy, questions that I've never had a 2yo ask me before. I'm sure they're common around here, but the boys never asked things like that at 2. And she gets this look in her eyes when I'm talking to her sometimes that just completely freaks me out, it's like she just *understands* things in ways I can't even begin to fathom.

LOL... it makes perfect sense to me since that is DD. Yesterday her grandparents brought her an Accordion. So today she was playing with it and told us we need to eat ice cream while she plays. She remembered being in an Italian buffet about a month or two back where we had finished lunch and had ice cream when a woman came in and played the Accordion for us. We haven't discussed it since that day or even when they gave it to her yesterday, but she remembers.

And I feel your frustration with preschool. They go by age not ability. So frustrating. DD will be one of the youngest in her class when she starts in the fall but she is already at the level of a kindergartener with her abilities so hopefully she will just find the fun of play with the group and not be bored. I chose not to mention what she can do and just wait and see how she does in the class. Since it is a playbase program we might not have any problems.

Mama, I can totally understand this.

Katelyn'sMom, from what I remember about what you've said, your DD is way, way out there ahead of the pack. It should be interesting how she does next year. I love the thought of her being the youngest, and I look forward to hearing what her teachers say next fall!

Socially, if DD could get into a classroom full of 10 year olds this month I promise you she'd never leave. That would be her dream come true. She couldn't keep up with the curriculum, but she'd have a great time.

You know, as far as the large scale 25 piece puzzle goes, I wanted to clarify that I had to do some facilitation for DD 25 mos. I handed her a piece, she looked at it and compared it to the picture, and then she decided where to place it. But I did frequently have to help her jimi the pieces into place. She was not always able to put new pieces in without disrupting the whole row.

My DS6 excels at I Spy and Where's Waldo but doesn't really like puzzles. I think he's intimidated by them.


Val

(coming in late here)

I've decided that, at least with my three kids, I can't really teach them how to do a puzzle --- the process needs to be something that they figure out for themselves. This may be because there are so many ways to put a puzzle together that what works for me could be opposite to what works for someone else.

I suggest giving her easier puzzles and letting her move to more complex ones. We had a 4 piece puzzle of a duck that my DD played with when she was 1-ish. She picked it up one evening and struggled and struggled to put it together. She was struggling so much that I was starting to feel uncomfortable on her behalf and was afraid she was going to have a meltdown. She didn't want any help.

To my relief, she finished the puzzle by herself. To my surprise, she then immediately dumped it out and started over. She didn't stop doing that puzzle until she'd mastered it! I was amazed. But the key thing was that she had to learn it herself.

Val

Mama: Thank you for the above. So it isn't just me. LOL I still find myself trying not to get into detail with DD but she just gets it and asks probing questions that makes it clear she understands it. She too is fascinated with the heavens. Yesterday it was cloudy so she went on and on about how the sun was behind the clouds but it isn't night time and at night she goes on and on about the moon and the stars. I really want to get a telescope but I keep saying she is only 2.

I forgot to answer the actual thread question, sorry!

DS4 started doing puzzles at 2.5, he just one day sat down and did a 50 piece dinosaur puzzle. It hadn't occured to me to show him and my older DS wasn't interested in them, so he didn't really do them much. DS4 is the puzzle kid in our family (and a boy after his puzzle-addict mother's heart, lol). He looks at the picture and finds the parts he wants to put together, like a particular dinosaur or the pirate ship, he doesn't start with the edges.

DD2 recently started being very interested in puzzles and can do a 24 piece one with some assistance, her and DS4 will sit and do every kid puzzle we own for well over an hour. I think it's about the only time they work together without someone crying! She does them the same way he does, she finds a part of the picture she's interested in doing and then works from there.

I think the big thing is finding a puzzle that they like, if they enjoy the theme, they'll be more inclined to do the puzzle. I also second the wooden jigsaw Melissa and Doug ones in the try, DD has a much easier time with those and will even do them on her own.

I am late in responding to this but I was thinking about dd1 and puzzles. She started with the Melissa and Doug wooden letters/numbers/shapes type at about 12 months. She never did them one at a time though. She would dump all of them and then put them together! Once she got really good at that, she would try to put them together without using her eyes to set the piece. (She would ask me to hand her a piece and she would find how it oriented with her eyes closed! Of course these were whole figure puzzles.

When we started parts of the whole figure puzzle, she started with melissa and doug Hands, body, train. From there, she took off with regular cardboard puzzles.

She has always been a prefectionist, so when she couldn't get a piece to fit, she would toss it under her bed and say it was lost!!

She's not so much a picture puzzle kind of kid any more. She likes Mathy puzzles, crosswords, science experiemens, etc.

Just wanted to share our experience today with the preschool since we toured the school this morning. They had established an area for the kids to interact with each other and DD, as usual, dummy down her verbal abilities when talking to the other kids but still I got these looks from the other mothers and finally someone asked 'Exactly how old is she?' I quickly replied she is 2 1/2 making sure to add the 1/2 to make her as old as possible. And this was the watered down version of DD.

Then while they were talking to us about the program the kids (that could) were playing with these foam boards with pegs. They were adding one at a time into each hole. I looked over at DD and she had stacked the pegs 6+ high. Again I get the strange looks from the other moms. But overall I have to say I am really hopeful that the preschool is a good fit and DD is super excited about it all.

We got Mr W those wooden puzzles with the knobs on them a few months ago.

He was fighting me to get the puzzle out of the plastic wrapper.

When I put the puzzle on the floor, he took all the pieces out, put them back as designed, then took each piece and systematically tested it in the other holes.

He then took the round piece, put the knob in his mouth, the piece covering his whole face, and crawled to his next toy, then tried to use that piece in its slots.

Nowadays, sometimes, I will take a piece and put the knob in my mouth, and he will laugh, put one in his mouth, and we will wait for DW to come into the room.

I'm sure he will fail his evals when he is 5 due to Dad encouraging his weirdness!!

[quote=Katelyn'sM om
But overall I have to say I am really hopeful that the preschool is a good fit and DD is super excited about it all. [/quote]

Yippee! So glad she's looking forward to it. Don't you wish, in those moments your DD shines, you could just say, "Yeah - isn't that miraculous?" The only drawback I can see to doing that is that it makes the other moms feel inadequate, like they've done something wrong or not done something right. But really, your DD is miraculous. I hope the new school and its staff and parents embrace that fact.

seablue,

Thanks for the good wishes. You are so sweet. But as tempting as the comment would be to make I just could never do that. I am certainly over sensitive to other people's feelings especially when it comes to their kids. Too bad we don't get that same courtesy. Oh if we lived in a perfect world...

DD is in rare form tonight ... very silly. My mom put her hand up and told DD "talk to the hand" which DD responded (not missing a beat) while wearing sunglasses upside down no less, "Do you not understand?" As I am rolling with laughter I confirmed my mom has never done this before so clearly was a rhyming game for her. So then DD came over to me and put her hand straight out not turned up and said talk to the hand, which she literally meant for me to talk to the hand and she talked for the hand and so I had a conversation with her hand. She so cracks me up.

I agree with Val. My daughter, who is eleven now, loves to work jigsaw puzzles. I did teach her about the frame later (when there was one) and yes, mastering that puzzle seems to be the thing for them.

My daughter enjoys the struggle. She is a "take it apart" kind of girl. She loves to explore the inside of old computers and toasters and whatever she can. All of these are puzzles.

I am hoping she will begin working on our cars soon and save us some money.

I think some just get it and some do not.
My gifted DS now 6 loved puzzels, mazes connect the dots and did not have to be taught and he would do 100 piece puzzles at 2/3.
Now my 2 year old couldn't do a 3 piece puzzle to save his life.
He just says "oh no broken" He is not ready for sure.
So the time will come when they can do them and depends on the child.

DS5 (GT) was not into puzzles until now. He'd do them, but didn't gravitate to them. He prefered (and still does) to draw, read, etc. DD3 loves them and can do them faster than DS5 could at her age, yet she cannot read, do math, etc that DS5 did at her age.