When I was growing up, I remember my uncles and aunt buying lots of toys that either required lots of imagination or puzzles that required me to think. The only puzzles I remembered having though, were those that were the typical jigsaw puzzles or those that required me to shuffle the pieces around on a small board to make a complete picture. Nowadays, kids have a much greater range when it comes to puzzles, and in my opinion much more challenging and fun too! I’ve seen the ones that they have at many kinders – the wooden ones with different levels of difficulty. Some, even I found challenging for ME! Hmm…maybe I should go back to kinder?

Why are puzzles such an important part of a child’s life? They’ve been known to:

• Build hand-eye coordination
• Help develop fine motor skills
• Encourage logical thinking
• In some cases even help with socialising and language building skills

DUO Wooden Puzzle rrp$30

Day & Night Puzzle rrp$40

Take this DUO wooden puzzle by Smart Games for instance, it not only teaches your child about pattern recognition via the pieces they have to put together from the challenge cards. This also encourages logical thinking when they have to figure out which piece comes first to create the finished picture. Read a review of this product here. The Day & Night puzzle also challenges your child’s pattern recognition either via the coloured challenge cards or to make things that little bit more challenging – the silhouette version.

Bronco rrp$15

Besides logical thinking, this Bronco puzzle is great for practising on fine motor skills. You child would need to move Bronco the horse around in the different spaces that would fit and get him out.

If you’re up to challenging your child’s observation skills, this Chicken Shuffle puzzle is a great example. With varying levels of difficulty, this will be great for kids from 6 years onwards. Your child would need to figure out how to shuffle the pieces in order to have each chicken sitting on an egg. As the levels get more challenging, other animals are introduced on the challenge cards and so the aim changes to include trying to avoid getting certain animals sitting next to each other. A game of real life logic and lateral thinking.

Blokus Duo rrp$35.00

miQube rrp$45.00

An example of a puzzle that exercises your child’s ability to strategise is this Blokus Duo. Not only would you need to place your coloured piece at the corner of your other pieces but, you would have to work out a strategy to block your opponent from placing their piece near where your piece is! The miQube is another game that utilises that function too. Working out the different 3D shapes and colours so that the blocks fit in together. Good as a group challenge or even as a solo player.

With socialising and language building skills, this Picture Talk puzzle helps build your child’s vocabulary by helping them describe what’s in the scene as they put the pieces of the puzzle together. There are also words that accompany the pictures to help your child learn to recognise everyday words through reading them. Another way of expanding their language skills would be create a story from the scenery.

MiQube

This is a great game to challenge not only your child’s but also YOUR mathematical concept & spatial reasoning skills. It has 5 different games in one. Ages 7 and up.

Game 1: Domination

Dominate the board with your selected colour, while second guessing your opponents next move. A bit like tic tac toe really.

Game 2: Advance

Link each of your pieces as you ‘advance’ across the board, while fighting to capture both position and territory as you go.

Game 3: Gridlock

You can only use one game colour to prevent your opponent from making a move. “The last man standing” wins!

Game 4: Connect Five

A new twist to the traditional connect four! With 3D, this makes the game a lot make interesting!

Game 5:Puzzle

Try and assemble the 13 pieces into a perfect six sided cube. A tricky and new version of rubik’s cube!