Friday, December 19, 2014

Toy Recommendations, Part 2

Puzzles are always a wonderful gift that can involve the whole family in meaningful interaction (or engage just one child), but if you've purchased many of the smaller-piece puzzles, then you've also thrown away a few due to missing pieces.

The answer? Floor puzzles!

Melissa and Doug make floor puzzles for three different levels: beginner, 24-50 pieces, and 100-pieces. They are high-quality, educational, and the pieces are too large to get lost. Children don't lose interest over time, especially when the family works the puzzles together. Puzzles aren't used everyday of course, but probably several times a month, and even more when they're detailed enough to really study.

Once the puzzles are pieced together, they offer sound learning. Your child can memorize the positions of the U.S. states (tactile, visual method, and even auditory if you say them), learn about the continents and their position, learn about the prominent animals living in different regions of the US and world, and learn the position of the planets and their relationship to one another and to the sun. That is just a sampling of what's available. Amazon has better prices by a dollar to two (usually), but you can use the Melissa and Doug website to see what they make.

My favorites:









Do you have any floor puzzles? Have you loved them?

2 comments:

Amber said...

I agree puzzles are great. We have a few but the kids have really enjoyed the US map puzzle. My oldest loves trying to see how fast she can get it put together.
We also had a alphabet puzzle that would take up the length of our living room floor. My youngest enjoyed it the most, especially since it was trains.

This post reminded me of the larger piece count puzzles we have that I would like to pull of for us to work on as a family. We are working to get back into having a family game night regularly but I think we need to add in family puzzle night as well.

Lisa said...

We love puzzles, too. They are our favorite pass-the-long-winter-evenings activities. Hubby likes the 500-1000 pc ones, and I agree - puzzles encourage wonderful family interaction. :)