Melissa and Doug Wooden Puzzles
Why do so many parents love Melissa and Doug wooden puzzles for their tots? It’s not just because they are great-looking toys that last and last. It’s because they combine great fun for the kids with developmentally appropriate educational benefits.
Wooden puzzles improve eye-hand coordination, as children manipulate the pieces to fit into the board properly. For the youngest tots, large, easy to grasp pieces, with a peg (or even a big knob like some of the Melissa and Doug wooden toys) are generally best. They’ll grasp that little peg and spin the piece right and left, working to fit it into the board.
The little ones love dumping out the puzzle tray, then working with mom or dad to pick up the wooden puzzle pieces one by one and fit them back together. There’s a healthy sense of accomplishment when the board is put back together. It’s good for the child’s self confidence and sense of order and organization. It rewards him for perseverance, teaches him that meeting a challenge and working to achieve a goal is fun.
While playing with wooden puzzles, he’s practicing shape and size recognition, as well as matching skills. These spatial relation skills develop logical thinking and are necessary for pre-reading. A child must learn to recognize and distinguish between 26 different special shapes to start learning to read. There are even some tray puzzles that use the letters of the alphabet as the pieces. But don’t throw out the farm scene just because you want Johnny to be an early reader.
Chances are the cow is a 27th shape and the tractor is the 28th and so forth. This means that Johnny’s little brain is building even more pathways and connections when he plays with the alphabet shapes as well as the farm ones. The more pathways there are flashing between neurons in a child’s brain, the better. Increased synapses means increased memory, IQ and a whole bunch of other healthy factors.
So let your child have fun with all different wooden puzzles and Melissa and Doug wooden toys too, the farm ones, and truck ones and train ones. Once he’s worked for a while with the sort that has picture clues in the bottom of the board, he’s probably old enough to be ready next for the sort that doesn’t have those clues, and relies simply on shape recognition alone. This is a more advanced skill and stretches and expands his mental capacities still further.
Eventually, by the time he’s three or four, your child will be to the point that he can enjoy a real jigsaw puzzle. The simple ones with just a few large pieces will prove challenging enough for him, at first, but he will work up to more complex versions with more and smaller pieces.
All the while, his brain is getting a great little workout. He’s realizing that he doesn’t completely have to rely on trial and error or rigorous shape recognition. He can eliminate several of the pieces out of hand for instance, because they are edge ones and he’s looking for a middle piece. This stretches and exercises his powers of logic and reasoning. And you can bet when he finishes his wooden puzzle and comes to show off that he feels as good about himself as any adult does after a good workout at they gym. Share his pride and sense of accomplishment and tell him what a great job he did on that puzzle.
You might think at this age you have to move away from the lovely Melissa and Doug wooden toys and start purchasing the cardboard jigsaws, but actually there are some wooden editions of jigsaw puzzles available. They have the durability of wood, and the ease of play. It really is easier to grasp the thicker wooden pieces, and since they’re good and solid, the wooden puzzles tends to sit flat a lot better than a cardboard ones.