We like puzzles in this family. When I was growing up, I remember vividly sitting at a table with my grandmother working on the latest 5,000-piece masterpiece. She loved doing puzzles, any kind of puzzles. We did puzzles that featured works by Monet, Matisse and even Picasso. Once or twice we did some crazy twisting puzzles by abstract artists. We also did puzzles on the sea, on horses, on dogs and in the early 1980s, I remember doing puzzles that included the engagement pictures of Charles and Diana and one of a photograph of their wedding.
10 Piece Puzzles
When my daughter was younger, she loved to figure things out. She loved to take them apart and put them back together. We went through several small board puzzles as she struggled to understand shape and color matching. Eventually she graduated to larger floor puzzles and soon she was working her way up to 40 and 50 piece puzzles. Today, we bought our first 125-piece puzzle and we’ve begun work on it together.
Doing Puzzles Together Can Be Fun
When you sit down to do a puzzle, there’s more than plenty enough time for a family to sit and talk together. It teaches your child a deliberate form of problem solving and patience. It’s also a great way to interact together because it can take teamwork to solve the puzzle. I’m tempted to get my daughter a Rubik’s Cube for Christmas, but I don’t think she’s quite ready for it yet.
The 125-piece puzzle hasn’t left her daunted, in fact, it’s made her delighted and the edging is done. So now we work on the inner layers, where we can match the puzzle shapes and colors to those edge pieces. What I find so neat about it – is since my grandmother died a few months before my daughter was born, I haven’t done any puzzles at all.
Yet here I am a few years later, doing puzzles with my daughter. It takes me back in time and it reminds me of those great times I spent with my grandmother. Our children cannot replace family members that have come and gone before them. They cannot replace that relationship. But the relationships that meant so much to us can blaze a path that teaches us how to build a positive relationship with them. In my family, puzzles are a positive influence on our relationships.
When was the last time you did a puzzle with your child?
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