Toddler Puzzles

Which Jigsaw Puzzles are Best for Toddlers ?

Thinking of buying toddler puzzles ?

Good !! These toys are one of the best child educational toy you can give to your tots for a considerably low price.

But before you head yourself to a toy store, you'd need to know on how to choose ideal toddler jigsaw puzzles, so that you only buy the right products.

In this article, you'll find guide in choosing age-appropriate jigsaw puzzles for toddlers and my recommendation of the best toddler puzzles in the market today.

Basically, there are 3 things to consider prior to buying a toddler puzzle:

• easiness of matching.
• number of pieces.
• durability and ease of handle

So how do these things translate when it comes to choosing a toddler jigsaw puzzle ? What features you should look for ?

Here are the list of what you should look for when shopping for beginner toddler puzzles:

• The beginner jigsaw puzzles should have big pieces.
• The beginner toddler puzzles should have pictures on the board which correspond to the pictures at the jigsaw puzzle pieces. The toddler puzzles hence should preferably have one complete picture per piece.
  
  Why ?
  
  Start by asking question on what a toddler can match. For a toddler, picture matching is easier than shape and size matching since shape and size are difficult concepts for toddlers to grasp. A toddler may not be able to complete a puzzle just by matching shape and size of the pieces to the board. However, picture matching is easier, and toddlers can certainly do that.
• Wooden jigsaw puzzles are the best since they are very durable and will withstand he everyday onslaught by your toddler.
• Try to get a wooden jigsaw puzzle with a knob or peg (known as knob puzzles and peg puzzles) on each piece for ease of handling.

You may also want to consider buying a toddler puzzle which comes with different textures embedded to the piece. This will of course add more value to the the puzzle since now it can also be used for tactile stimulation. However, these wooden jigsaw puzzles do not come with knobs, so you may want to reserve these for toddlers who are good at lifting wooden puzzle pieces without pegs or knobs.

Therefore, for the youngest toddlers, you basically look for toddler jigsaw puzzles which will increase your toddler's picture matching and fine motor skills.

But how about older toddlers (24-36 months) ?

Older toddlers - say around 24 months - are ready to move to more challenging puzzles. My preference for older toddlers is to get toddler puzzles which will increase fine motor skills, refine shape recognition and therefore, pre-reading skills, and to boost your toddler's logic skills.

For this age group, you should look for puzzles with these features :

• Challenging one-piece puzzle for shape recognition. Find puzzles which do not have pictures attached to the hole, so that when the puzzle pieces are lifted up, the hole is blank. Therefore, your toddlers would have to learn to recognize shape better in order to put the puzzles back together again. Learning to distinguish shapes is crucial for reading, so giving your toddlers this kind of puzzles is an excellent and fun way to enhance your toddler's reading readiness.
• Puzzles which will increase your toddler's fine motor skills. Simple foam puzzles and magnetic wooden puzzles which require your toddlers to use magnetic fishing pole, for instance, to lift and put back the puzzle pieces are excellent to boost your toddler's fine motor skills.
• Puzzles which have several pieces per-picture to increase your toddler's logic ability. You can start your toddlers with simple 2-piece wooden puzzles and proceed to 5-7-piece wooden or foam puzzles. In addition, you may also want to consider buying cube wooden puzzle for your toddler

Here's our recommendation if you're shopping for the best jigsaw puzzle for your toddler. Please bear in mind that this is recommendation only, and you should always customize depending on your toddler's development or maturity level. My girls can do this kind of things as toddlers, but my son, being a late bloomer guy, can do these things much more later than my girls.

Best Jigsaw Puzzles for Young Toddler (Absolute Beginner, around 12-24 months).

As alluded above, toddlers need to start with puzzles with one-piece (one piece per picture) wooden peg puzzles or knob puzzles which are easy for little hands to grab. In addition, the beginner toddler puzzles should have pictures underneath the puzzle pieces so what your has to do is to match the picture of the puzzle pieces with the picture at the bottom of the hole in the board. You can see a decent selection of wooden knob puzzles or peg puzzles made by Melissa and Doug here, or the one made by Small World Toys (Puzzibilities Level 2) here.

For more fine-motor skill challenge, you may want to buy some one-piece toddler wooden puzzles with no pegs or knobs. Melissa & Doug makes textured wooden puzzle (touch and feel series) with no knobs or pegs which are ideal for toddlers this age.

Once your toddler is good at matching the picture and the shape, you can get the more advanced toddler puzzles where she can match the puzzle pieces with the hole shape on the board. To refine your toddler's ability to recognize shape, find toddler wooden puzzles which do not pictures at the bottom of the puzzle holes.

Magnetic wooden puzzle made by Melissa & Doug can be used to get your toddler to match shape of the hole and puzzle pieces. These magnetic puzzles are also good to enhance your toddler's fine motor skills because your toddlers are expected to take out and put back the magnetic puzzle pieces using either a tow, a bug catcher net or a fishing pole which come with the puzzles.

Other one-piece puzzles which are excellent to boost your toddler's shape recognition as well as fine motor skills are foam puzzles put out by Lauri. These puzzles are also called pre-reading puzzles for a reason. They are designed to enable your toddlers to differentiate subtle differences in shapes. As you know, shape recognition is prerequisite to reading. There is no doubt that this kind of puzzles will help your children to distinguish "p" from "q" and "b" from "d". The one that I like the most is the people posture puzzle. But there are others available, such as: cars , butterflies , and school of fish .

Lauri also makes letter puzzles (lower or upper case) which are greatly enjoyed by my 3 yo. These foam puzzles can be played at several levels, starting with just doing the puzzle, to teaching beginning sound and the sound of a letter.

Toddlers at this age group are ready to solve simple puzzles which have many pieces making up of one picture.

The easiest one is the 2-piece puzzles by by Infantino or the popular 3-piece bear family dress-up puzzle

Simple two-piece wooden cube puzzles are also good to provide more challenge, because your toddler have to decide out of 6 possibilities (one picture per cube side) which pieces go together. This puzzle is also self-correcting - when your toddler gets it correct, she will be rewarded with sound. This toddler wooden puzzle is available here.

Finally, for more practice on fine motor skills and logic, you may want to get snuggly-fitting foam puzzles consisting of 5-7 puzzle pieces per-picture, such as the ones put out by Lauri and are available here.

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Related child jigsaw puzzle articles:

• Preschool children's jigsaw puzzles.
• Best jigsaw puzzles for kids (elementary school age)
• Child jigsaw puzzle benefits for child development and shopping guide.
• Shopping for kid wood jigsaw puzzles
• Wooden cube puzzle - when to use these ?
• Jigsaw puzzle storage(non peg wooden puzzle storage)
  • Peg and knob wooden puzzle storage

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