Glen Education Orrong Road

The Value of Puzzles

Glen Orrong Rd Educational Team

Puzzles play an important role in helping to develop a wide range of skills in young children, such as; concentration, spatial awareness, shape recognition, topic-specific knowledge, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, problem solving skills, language, and patience, not to mention the satisfaction of successfully completing a puzzle. The physical, cognitive and emotional skills gained from having the opportunity to do puzzles are enormous. We always provide a range of puzzles that vary in degrees of difficulty and we encourage children to not just tip out a puzzle then decide it is too difficult and walk away leaving it in pieces, but to persevere and seek help from a peer or an educator if they get stuck. We like to celebrate the completion of a puzzle, and recognise the amount of patience and effort that has been invested, as they can be very challenging.

Puzzles are a great opportunity for children to work together with others to achieve a common goal and celebrate success as a team.

LEARNING – OUTCOME 4:  Children are confident and involved learners

Goal 1:  Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity (EYLDF - Early Years Learning and Development Framework)

Often the levels of ability amongst the children are at very different levels, and puzzles provide a good opportunity for children to learn from one another when the degree of complexity is proving to be a bit challenging. We provide a range of puzzles in our program to cater for various developmental stages. Puzzles allow children to choose to work on their own, or with their peers to complete the puzzle, and it can give opportunities to engage in rich conversations with others during the experience.