Thursday, 27 August 2009

Puzzles, puzzles all day long

I found these animal puzzles and also some construction vehicle puzzles at the boot fair for 50p! They are 3,4,5 and 6 pieces and L can't get enough of them. This is the first time that I have really seen a sensitive period so blatantly in action! She does them over and over again. I like these puzzles because she has to first sort them into piles and once she has done one she has to push it off of the mat to clear a space for the next one. They are not only teaching her about puzzles but also how to organise her work space.


I also made up this song for cleaning the puzzles up. Something along the lines of This is the way we.... but we would sing L.... is putting the elephant away, elephant away, elephant away, L.... is putting the elephant away into the box. I've also tried it in other areas like clearing her table and it seems to be transferable. Woohoo! Simple but it works a treat at the moment and I'm milking it for all it's worth while I can!

I also found some great African animal cards at the boot fair for 10p. They have very detailed descriptions on the back which we can use later on. After looking through them L matched her animals to the ones on the cards. There was a similar activity posted on The Wonder Years a little while ago.






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3 comments:

  1. Leptir (NataĊĦa)27 August 2009 at 13:57

    Activity with cards and plastic animals is great. I'll try to do something like this for children in my classroom.

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  2. Gypsy28 August 2009 at 00:35

    That looks really sweet! My Munchkin has just never got into puzzles, despite my having spent a fortune on beautiful ones from the Michael Olaf catalogue - my own obssession! I'm goign to try the animal matching game though ;)

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  3. P.S. Montessori29 August 2009 at 09:26

    I have a set of Judy-Instructo puzzles that I inherited from the teacher before me. She actually made a point to say that they were the only thing she was going to take, but then changed her mind. I can see why. These puzzles are very old, but AWESOME. These are small, but challenging puzzles that challenge the child to remember what the picture looked like. I use these puzzles mostly as a transitional activity for incoming new children, but my second and third years have begun building the puzzles OUTSIDE of the frame (like we do with maps). Puzzles are the gift that keeps on giving...

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