Teaching With Puzzles

Did you know that puzzles increase the following abilities?

• Vocabulary
• Small muscle development
• Hand to eye coordination
• Memory skills
• Problem solving creativity
• Spatial perception

At Charis, our teachers are learning about the effectiveness of puzzles in teaching children skills and concepts.

The skills acquired while completing puzzles are a foundational part of successful learning. Solving puzzles develops several functions of the brain simultaneously while children learn and have fun.  Puzzles nurture children’s abilities to reason, deduce, analyze, and sequence. Puzzles develop logical thought and problem solving skills.  Puzzles nurture skills like visual perception and analysis, fine-motor control, project completion and patience.  Puzzles are engaging. They can be played alone or in a group, and they cover a wide variety of subjects and skill areas.  What some adults may see as just a “toy” is actually a valuable teaching tool.

At Charis we recognize that children have various learning styles, and puzzles require our students to use more than one type of learning aptitude in the process of solving them. The most obvious learning style for solving a puzzle is visual.  Puzzles are also good for the kinesthetic tendencies of learners.  Kinesthetic learners grow through practical hands-on activities.  For children with an auditory preference in learning, conversation about the correlations in a puzzle needs to happen at the same time as the puzzle is being done.

FIVE Tips for Teaching puzzle skills to children

1. Start with simple puzzles with few pieces.
2. When the child is successful, introduce her to a more difficult puzzle.
3. Resist the temptation to point out where pieces fit, and assist only when asked.   
4. Allow plenty of time to figure it out.
5. Increase a child’s vocabulary by using words such as straight, curved, edge, inside, outside, above, below, and beside