jigsaw guidance please

[creations]

Can anyone with an older child give me some guidance on ages and stages of jigsaws please?

DS has a couple of jigsaws (from 3 piece to 16 piece) but just recently seems more interested in doing the larger ones on his own (with me just sitting with him chatting).  It's suddenly a bit 'done that' like he needed or wanted something different so I picked up a couple of cheap ones from the £ shop today.  I didn't really know what I was looking for.
We did the 20 piece together with me showing him first to sort the pieces (edges and non-edges) which he's never needed to do before, then told him to put the edges together first, followed by the centre pieces. He really enjoyed it but beyond the couple of instructions he didn't need any other help - have I bought something too easy or is this how it should be?

The others are 45 pieces and 54 pieces but the pieces are totally different sizes. The 45 piece jigsaw has quite large pieces where as the 54 piece has very small pieces like you'd expect in an adult jigsaw.  I'm not worried about choke hazards, he doesn't put stuff in his mouth and any way I am with him, but even so, should I be putting the 54 piece jigsaw away until he is much older with the pieces being so small?  Is this likely to be bewildering and demotivating for him?

How do you know when to introduce a jigsaw with a larger number of pieces or pieces that are smaller in size?
I want him to have the fun and enjoyment of the challenge but not be overwhelmed. Is it just trial and error with what to offer?

[TB9]

I would start with the 45 piece then move up to ones with more and smaller pieces.  Here they are labeled by age, so 2+, 3+, 6+, etc.  I have puzzles out that dd generally can do without my help (which are great when I want her to play on her own), but I also have puzzles available that she needs my help with.  Since both types are out, and im almost always able to help if she needs it she can be challenged if she wants to do a more complicated puzzle.  Sometimes you dont really know how hard it will be until you pull it out and try.  If he has a difficult time you can always leave it as one that you do together.

To help with some if the more difficult ones I will sort pieces for her and have her do only one section of the puzzle at a time, or I will describe what sort of piece she needs to find to put in the spot.

[Bryony's mum]

Ds 3 adores puzzles right now.  He has some octonauts ones - ranging from 12 to 24 pieces that he does by himself (although I sort into piles for each puzzle).  Even though he can do them by himself, he loves the familiarity of them, and does them several times a day.  His other favourites have 15 to 26 pieces, and reasonably large pieces, although if he comes across a much harder puzzle e.g. at MIL's, he will be desperate to do those too, and I have to sit and almost hand the pieces to him in order, as the 100 piece ones are far too tricky for him.

Sometimes it's not the size and number of pieces, it's what's on them.  You need puzzles where the picture carries on obviously from one piece to the next, so there are obvious bits to match up.  One of Eliot's favourites has letters of the alphabet with a picture, one puzzle piece per letter, but on the sticky out bits of the pieces, you can see a little of the next picture along, so he can find the next piece himself.  I have seen some really badly thought out puzzles for kids where there's a small picture and then most of it is a plain coloured border - very tricky as there are no clues!

I aim for puzzles that are just beyond what he can already do, and I sit with him the first time he does them, to help.  I don't usually bother with edges and corners, as I think that's quite a complex way to do puzzles, and one that he can't do so easily on his own at this age.  I encourage him to look for pieces that match - 'can you see the rest of the bear's hat?'  'What's that pink bit there?' etc, so that when he does it himself, he knows what to look for.

One other tip - make sure you buy decent quality puzzles!  Some of the cheap ones have really thin pieces that warp easily, and it's impossible to keep the pieces locked together when they won't lie flat on the floor - very frustrating!!

[creations]

Thank you for the tips!

It's nice to hear there is a chance of returning to the same puzzle time and again, he has sort of done this with the few he already had but then seemed to need more so perhaps I've bought the new ones at the right(ish) time.  I'll keep offering the older ones too though.

I was kind of stuck on how much help to give too.  I think we will tackle the 54 piece one together tomorrow and I'll just help more than I have with the others. I'm going to try not sorting them too like you said, just look for what fits, looks like I have sort of forced him into my own method rather than letting him find his own even though I was trying to let him do it himself. It's interesting to hear about other's LOs doing these, we never have any out at play group so I don't get to see how other kids or parents approach it.

I hear you on the quality - good point. I was lucky the ones I got were good, one of them is a Mr Men selling for £6.50 plus p&p on amazon and the others are Graffix, seem to be nice quality and again selling for much higher price - amazing what you can get in a £ shop hey?

letters of the alphabet with a picture, one puzzle piece per letter,

But this fills me with dread!  DS is so letter obsessed I couldn't bare to sit through more alphabet, I am trying to get him away from letters I'm so fed up of them!  Pictures are what we need

To help with some if the more difficult ones I will sort pieces for her and have her do only one section of the puzzle at a time.

I think I'll try this with the small pieces one with 54 pieces, seems like a good plan to get him going.

Here they are labeled by age, so 2+, 3+, 6+, etc.

I don't really go by ages because here just about everything is marked as 'not suitable for 0-3 yos' because of the choke hazard. He was 'reading' board books at 6 months that had the 'not suitable for 0-3 yrs' warning on them.  So when I see 3+ I don't see it as an indication that it is a suitable skill level, rather that they want to cover their backs legally.  He has tons of toys and books with much older age guidance on.  For example he likes doing dot to dots and that book also has the 'not for 0-3' warning on it, so you see why I don't follow the ages on boxes/books.

We did the 45 piece today. He enjoyed it again.  A couple of times he asked me to join in (I was right by him talking about it) so i think he wants a bit more hands on so that he feels we are doing it together which will be ideal for the 54 piece.  I can see I will be out shopping again before too long.

Thanks!

[creations]

Just stopping by to say he sid the 54 piece today and I followed your advice and did not separate edges with non-edges, but instead let him just look at the pictures and match up the colours etc. He really enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it more too!  Thanks!
I quickly realised the 54 piece wasn't big enough to follow the tip of doing one section at a time, he just did the whole thing, but I'll keep that in mind for bigger ones.  I'm already thinking of getting more

[We Three]

Wow that's really good that he's doing 54 pieces at his age!      DD got a 100 piece one for her 5th birthday and I was impressed that she could do that then!  He's on track to be doing 500 pieces by then!

[creations]

Ha ha! Really?
I did help a little, saying things like "ooh who is that one there?" and he'd answer "Mr Tickle's hand" or whatever, I also think a couple of times he purposely tried to put the piece in the wrong way just to get me to 'help' him, mostly he wants to feel like we are playing together and I've realised if I don't DO something (hands on) then he feels like I'm not playing even though I am right there with him.  There are pictures of some other jigsaws in the set and he immediately started telling me which he'd like to do next but I don't have them.
I'm sort of tempted to look out a 100 piece just to see what happens and also to try the idea of doing a section at a time, it might be nice to do it in two halves perhaps on two different days, I don't know.  But I don't want to overwhelm him.  I know when he first saw the 54 pieces a couple of days back he did seem overwhelmed but he did the others with fewer pieces and then just said he wanted to do it.
We usually read books when we first get up in the morning but the last few days have been jigsaws and it's made a really nice change, it's great to see the joy and satisfaction on his face when he puts the last piece in. Today he even joked around with the last 2 pieces  knowing he was about to finish and delaying putting them in. I remember the bitter-sweet of achieving something, wanting to finish but not wanting the fun to end, perhaps he felt that this morning.

[Bryony's mum]

Today he even joked around with the last 2 pieces  knowing he was about to finish and delaying putting them in. I remember the bitter-sweet of achieving something, wanting to finish but not wanting the fun to end, perhaps he felt that this morning.

That's really sweet!  Unfortunately we are missing a couple of Octonauts pieces, so just as Eliot's about to finish, it turns out there's no more pieces!

[creations]

Oh no!  Does he get upset?  I don't know if DS would handle that well, hard to say, he understands lost and will look for things and kind of accept that we can't find something but equally he can get very upset over things that appear insignificant but have great meaning to him.  We have an on-going problem with stress dreams just now and I can well imagine lost jigsaw pieces being the subject of sleep disturbance if we lost any here.  I think I'd have to bin the jigsaw and buy another as quickly as possible!

[michaeljacknnugg]

We were doing the 100 piece ones pretty quickly, I think. Once they have got the jigsaw bug they just keep going - at least for a while! We've got a set on the iPad now, instead of buying new ones. They take up too much space!

Have you seen the jigsaw books you can get? We have a couple of the Julia Donaldson ones and they include the story and a jigsaw on each page.

[creations]

Yes we have a jigsaw book, he's had that one a while now and liked the poem/story and I'm sure he will still continue to enjoy it, but those were the ones he was doing when I felt he would like something more of a challenge, they are 16 pieces per puzzle in the book we have.  I got a 100 piece today and we started it but it was close to nap time and he didn't really have the energy for it so we just did a little. I'll see how it goes - its a Disney Princesses one!  He has no idea who they are, just pretty girls

[Bryony's mum]

One of our oldest and most favourite puzzles is a disney princess one!  It's a 64 piece conveniently divided into 4 16-piece sections, one of each princess.  When dd and ds1 used to do it, they used to race each other to complete their two sections!

Eliot's not too bad with the missing pieces - while we were on holiday, he'd say that the pieces were at home, and now we're home, he has a cursory look under the sofas, but isn't too bothered!

We had a couple of jigsaw books but I found the pieces would start falling out and go missing, and I'd get too irritated to keep the book! 

[*Liz*]

DS was doing so well with puzzles, then just kind of stopped. Even some 50ish piece jigsaws can be hard as they have very detailed pictures on them, and I think that was where he lost interest a bit.

I'm hoping the winter will bring more puzzles and games though  .

[creations]

Well, after nap he had a look at the 100 piece princess jigsaw but said it was too hard so we put it away. I don't want to put him off, he said the same about the 54 piece Mr Men only a few days back and then decided to do it, so maybe in a few days or few weeks he will give it another go.  We're not in a hurry.  I'm enjoying this new activity   He did another new 45 piece one today which was fun.  I think he's addicted!

The tips about the images etc have been great. I did pick one up today at the shop which I knew was too old for him, an astronaut image but will keep it for when he is older, he likes space and rockets etc and Daddy has a degree in astrophysics so I kind of couldn't not buy it, 60 pieces but SO much harder than the 54 piece Mr Men jigsaw.  So yes, I am getting a feel now for the images, the size of the pieces etc.  And true that the smaller pieces do not seem to be a problem at all if the image is right.

This thread has been a GREAT help.
 

[Erin M]

Just a word about sorting -- dd1 loves jigsaws (though with our limited space and her little brother we haven't done many recently!) and it took until we were doing 500+ piece ones around the time she turned 5 for her to actually start sorting them and having that make sense.  Not sure why it took so long!