Creative Puzzles: Kids Corner

Aired on Superstation WGN
Saturday, January 29 and March 12, 2005
Show 204

It was a decade before the American Revolution when Englishman, John Spilsbury, who was an engraver and a map maker, attached a map of the world to a piece of wood and then cut out each individual country to teach children about geography. He had invented the jigsaw puzzle. This type of cutout puzzle is still used today and it's a wonderful learning tool. Children and adults use puzzles to learn and hone their problem solving skills. That's right, puzzles are not only fun, they can actually help teach your children to think.  Here's a fun and educational experience you could share with your child. Build your own jigsaw puzzle. To get started, all you need is an age appropriate map or a picture of anything your child is interested in. You can use a family photo, a calendar page, a child's artwork or even a magazine page. Then mount it on a piece of cardboard. Cut that up into various shaped pieces using an exacto knife or other sharp blade. This part, you moms and dads should handle. Since your child will already know what the finished puzzle should look like, it'll be easier for them to figure out where the pieces go and be more fun for them. Plus, just participating in the process of making the puzzle is a nice lesson in creativity. As your children grow older, continue to challenge their problem solving skills. Give them more difficult puzzles and more challenging games. Just don't go overboard; you don't want this to be a lesson in frustration. You might want to checkout a fun website called, jigzone.com. It's got hundreds of different puzzles you can actually solve online. Using puzzles and games to develop thinking skills is something that can have a big impact on your children throughout their lives. Good problem solvers are more likely to thrive in stressful situations, because they feel like they have more control over their lives. It might seem odd at first to think this corner piece of the puzzle can be the cornerstone to helping your child develop better problem solving abilities. But it's true. And besides, you get to spend some time with your kids building puzzles and that's not all bad.