The days of putting together 1,000-piece puzzles with your child are still years away, but the cognitive elements of puzzle building have already started to connect in your toddler’s brain. When babies and toddlers start to manipulate toys and other objects to fit into a particular space, a number of skills are developing in their growing brains and bodies.
These toddler puzzle skills include:
Fine motor practice
These are the small, more precise movements babies and toddlers work so hard on when they play with physical objects, like grasping, pointing, clutching, squeezing, etc.
Hand-eye coordination
This refers to the way hands and eyes work together to complete a task.
Gross motor practice
Movements that work the larger muscles of the arms and legs, such as walking, jumping, and climbing, all develop gross motor skills. Puzzles tap into this too, especially the large-format kinds, like floor puzzles.
Recognizing shapes & spatial awareness
Toddler brains benefit enormously from practice with figuring out how things fit together, how to orient and rotate objects, and predicting which shapes might fit a particular space.
Memory
Solving puzzles, even the simplest ones, is great for building short-term memory and forming neural connections in your toddler’s brain.
There’s a lot more going on, too, especially as your toddler gets older. Puzzles offer practice in resilience, teamwork, managing frustration, and even mathematical concepts like parts of a whole and symmetry.
What does puzzle-solving look like at each stage? Remember, as always, that every child develops differently and may have a trajectory with puzzles that differs from these benchmarks. It’s also good to give kids at all stages plenty of time to experiment, play, and explore—even if it’s not the “right” way to solve a puzzle.
Explore The Play Kits
Here is the general puzzle-solving progression babies and toddlers go through:
One-piece puzzles
Babies start to work with simple, one-piece puzzles around 6-8 months. Much of the time, that means mouthing the puzzle piece—that’s okay!
See inside The Inspector Play Kit
The Inspector Play Kit
$80
The Inspector Play Kit exposes your 7 – 8 month old to the world with detailed sensory experiences by exploring texture, practicing nesting and stacking, and learning about object permanence.
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The pincer grasp
Close to their first birthday, your baby may start working on their pincer grasp (grasping objects between thumb and index finger). This allows them to start removing puzzle pieces more easily and even fitting one inside its resting place. Your baby will probably also love taking completed puzzles and dumping them on the floor.
Explore The Thinker Play Kit
The Thinker Play Kit
$80
The Thinker Play Kit encourages your 11 – 12 month old baby’s curiosity as they start solving problems, working on hand strength and investigating everything in their path.
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Multi-piece puzzles
Toddlers start to work on multi-piece puzzles with simple shapes between 13 and 15 months;circlesare a great way to begin. Especially if you offer some guidance, your toddler may start noticing when pieces do and don’t fit into a particular space.
See inside The Babbler Play Kit
The Babbler Play Kit
$120
The Babbler Play Kit, designed with your child’s development in mind, is full of playthings and activities that tap into the magic world of a brand-new one-year-old. See what’s inside!
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Different shapes
Your toddler is probably ready to start working with different shapes when they’re around 18 months old. Whether those shapes are geometric, animal, or otherwise, there is a newfound understanding that different shapes fit in different places.
Explore The Realist Play Kit
The Realist Play Kit
$120
The Realist Play Kit is full of playthings and activities for your one-and-a-half-year-old. Match animals, practice pouring, and more—you and your child can explore together.
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Jigsaw puzzles
An introduction to jigsaw puzzles might be just right when your toddler turns two—maybe even a little sooner. Simple, oversized jigsaw puzzles are a great way to practice this new way of fitting shapes together, and they lay the groundwork for more complex puzzling down the line. You can also introduce floor puzzles at this age, which engage the whole body in fun new ways.
See inside The Companion Play Kit
The Companion Play Kit
$120
The Companion Play Kit is a celebration of the things your child can do, and some things they’re just starting to explore: coloring, matching, comparing, categorizing, stacking, sorting, and more.
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