May 18, 2021

Why are puzzles useful for children ?

Our new face puzzles allow your child to take a more hands on approach to playing and engage with a toy that promotes cultural awareness. At Little Omo, we pride ourselves in making fun educational products that focus on representing children of colour. We hope you love the puzzles as much as we did, designing and creating them specially for your children.

Children’s puzzles can look deceptively simple but they are actually a fantastic tool to help your child learn some essential skills, let's have a look at some of the benefits:

Concentration: It can be a struggle to keep children focused, but they often love the challenge of how the puzzle will eventually come together. Encourage independent play by placing the puzzle in front of your child, just to allow them to play, feel and understand what the functionality of the puzzle is. You can also demonstrate how to do the puzzle, by placing each piece in one by one and then let them try and watch as your child becomes more confident and starts to engage with it.
Shape & Colour Recognition: The Little Omo face puzzles will also encourage your child to become more aware of shapes and colours. It's important for children to develop the skills to distinguish between shapes as this will help them learn letters and numbers too.
The puzzles will also familiarise your child with the different parts of their face, our Parts of the body flashcards is a great resource to use alongside our puzzles. You can talk to your child about the different parts, help them pronounce the words and develop their understanding of their own face.
Fine motor skills: We've watched our little ones struggle to pick objects or their toys up and then drop them again, young children are still developing their fine motor skills and puzzles are a great way to exercise gripping and holding. They need these skills for holding a pencil when they go to school so it's a good idea to start letting them work on it from a young age.
It can be very tempting to step in and help your child, but try to resist when it comes to tasks that involves allowing them to work on their fine motor skills. The more your child works on this independently (with supervision), the more confident they will become.
Problem Solving & Patience : This is such an important skill for children to learn while they are young, as it encourages and forces them to find the correct piece for the puzzle. You will notice a lot of repetition when your child is playing with the puzzle, twisting, turning pushing the pieces around and your child may get very frustrated at times. Remember to guide your child on the journey of completing the puzzle and cheer them.
Social skills: Puzzles are a fantastic way to teach your child how to work together with others in a team. The more people you have trying to solve the puzzles the better as there will be more suggestions and everyone can take it in turns to finish the puzzle.