I am curious as to how people do puzzles with their children. I sit back and let my daughter pick up whatever pieces she wants and give her hints like arranging them by color or by animal pieces or if there is a picture to look at the picture and make a replica. Any other ideas let me know. She loves doing them.
I’ve had temporary babysitters the last two weeks and it is really surprising as to how many do the puzzles for the child or even place the blocks next to eachother and let them put the finished piece together or tell them where to put each piece as my DD picks them up. They are temporary as in only for few days so I don’t want to be the impose. One of the sitter even disagreed with me about reading lines with finger under them eventhough I could definately tell that she was quite smart and knew a lot of stuff.
I think the method you use is good and also interactive.
I personally would kindly let the babysitter know that I would appreciate it if they let my child put the puzzle together on their own as much as they could or demonstrate how I usually work with my child on the puzzles. Then if my child can not put the piece in the correct place then the babysitter can guide them. But I believe that a child can learn through trial and error much better than watching someone else who keeps doing the work for them.
I disagree with your babysitter’s oposition to reading lines with your finger underneath.
http://www.howkidsdevelop.com/speechReading.html
Run your finger under the words as you read.
Why? Running fingers under the text trains a child’s eyes to follow words and symbols from left to right. Also, one of the first steps when learning to read is hearing sounds in the words. This teaches that speech is made up of different individual words and sounds
She may be smart and know alot of stuff but has she ever raised a child or taught a child to complete puzzles on their own or how to read?
ariel, i was really glad to read your question because i had many times a similar situation with the girl looking after my grandson. Sometime i feel as if she was having a very good time ‘doing’ the puzzle instead of giving him the time and opportunity of looking for himself. Luckily when he is with me i follow the same guidelines you mention. When the puzzle is a little bit difficult for his age, i keep telling him to look for the borders first but found out that his vision is much more accurate than mine and many times without the borders first, he keep putting the right pieces together.
I think it is something we have to work according to the situation. There are some times when he wants me to do the puzzle with him so i look for some pieces but a little bit slow so that he can find most of them.
I’ll be honest - it depends in how much of a hurry I am when we are doing puzzles - sometimes I help, sometimes I even put in a few pieces, sometimes I suggest she look for some more of whatever it is she is working on and make comments about the piece in her hand (corner, edge etc piece) or suggest she turn it to make it fit. If the babysitter isn’t there long term I’d probably just leave it as doing it for them once or twice won’t hurt and just agree to disagree with the other one, but if they were there long term I’d have more to say. Sometimes I just leave my child entirely alone and she does the puzzles by herself but she likes the interaction and sharing the experience.
I have a personal mandate (whatever that means! Reality sometimes gets in the way! lol ) to have my son do one puzzle at least every other day - ideally, every day.
What I’ve discovered is that even though he WANTS me to “do it wiff” him he doesn’t really want input. MY way of doing a puzzle is outside in. MY way begins with sorting all the straight edges from the others. MY way is finding the corners and putting them in place. Apparently, when I was mouthing off to my mom in my teen years IS true! - “YOUR way MOTHER, is not always the ONLY way!”
His enthusiasm has a much better chance at lasting if I let him work it out on his own. And, if he asks for help, I will suggest to rotate the piece or to maybe try to find a different piece (“Oh, I see you want to finish this little boy’s face, but he’s missing part of his hair and his ear. Where could we find that piece?”). Also, before we take the puzzle apart to do, we talk about the picture (“Look there’s two firefighters in this picture. One is by the tree, the other is by the car.” etc) This seems to help him put it together better - he’s not frustrated when the firefighter’s feet don’t fit the one by the tree, because he knows there’s another firefighter than needs feet, too.)
And I agree, if your sitters are temporary there’s not really much harm in leaving it be. When/if you get permanent care for your child, just make sure they know what you want. A good sitter will do what you ask.
When I introduce a new task to JJ I let him explore it and then I always demonstrate how to do the puzzle in a very purposeful and precise way. Those familar with Montessori would understand this method. I may do this several times. Then I step back and I let him play with it all by himself any way that he wishes. When he is done I will then demonstrate the puzzle again before I put it away. And I do this every time JJ brings it to me. Basically I am modelling and he loves to watch me.
Lately we have been working on a stacker with squares, rectangles, triangles and circles in green, red, blue and yellow. Each time I lay out a puzzle piece I say very clearly. Red circle, blue circle, green circle, yellow circle, red square and so forth.
We also do puzzles with big knobs and each time I lay out the pieces and I tell JJ, this is a dog arf arf, this is a duck quack quack. I say the same thing every time. My son has a speech delay so working on speech is essential right now.
Very good starter puzzles are ones with big pieces and big knobs. Melissa and Doug carry a very good selection. Walmart now carries some good puzzles very cheaply too. I think only $3 each puzzle.
Love this post! My son used to love doing puzzless. He enjoyed trying to fit the pieces together.
When he turned two, things have changed. He does not want to do them on his own any more.
He wants me to help. In his mind, he kind of thinks that puzzles are broken toys. They need
to be fixed. So, he always ask me “Mommy fixes it”! lol
I am trying to encourage him to do them by himself.
Thanks everyone! I actually had no idea this post received so many comments. I don’t check the email acc that my brillkids account is associated with. It was nice to hear everyone’s strategies and comments.
We have passed the temporary babysitters stage. Now I am noticing my daughter temptation to quit very fast when she works on the puzzles. arrghh… hopefully it will pass.
My son’s gone into a “Mum do it for me!” phase even though he can do it himself. So I either deliberately work slowly or I help him out a little then make an excuse to do something, e.g. I need to go to the toilet, why don’t you keep going and I’ll come back to help you. I find that once he’s started and into the puzzle, he’s like a snowball rolling down the hill and he doesn’t really notice I’m not there to help.
Boy, for me at that age I got the big chunky wooden puzzles. We’d sit and do them together first. Then I would let her try on her own and if they asked for help. I just did. Didn’t make a big deal out of it. As they grew older they just did them more and more on their own. Now my 4yr old is tackling on 100 piece puzzles on her own , well with a little help from me at times.
Its just a stage. Just enjoy the moment because before too long he won’t want any of your help for anything. LOL
Puzzle time at that age for us was some mommy and child time. The older they got the more they did on their own.
Boy am I happy to see that I’m not the only one with puzzle issues! Josiah has hit a “Mommy, we have to do it the same way every time!” phase. That means if I put it together the first time, then I ALWAYS have to put it together. We’re working on it and tackling other aspects of “puzzle time.” Right now we focus on a 4 - 12 pc Dinosaur puzzle set from Melissa and Doug. He won’t actually put all the pieces together, but he will hand me each piece and talk to me about where it goes if I ask him. We talk about clues (“Oh look, that’s a cloud in the sky, it must go on top”, " I see a foot and rocks. That goes on the bottom", etc.) And I will sometimes put the pieces very close so he has to manipulate them a bit to get them into place. I don’t leave these out as I am trying to teach him about orderliness, ie. not mixing up the 4 puzzles (They have little seperate storage chambers). This has paid off as he now disassembles each puzzle and puts it in its little compartment before starting the next one. I think he really just enjoys Mommy (or Daddy) sitting and doing it with him.
