Sand and Glitter

One mom's understanding of childhood development

Train your brain with jigsaw puzzles (Feva Foam)

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Completing a jigsaw puzzle has a number of surprising benefits. As educational toys go, this seemingly simple activity rocks. How do I buy myself 10 minutes for make up and hair when things are going pear-shaped? Give the kids some puzzles. This brightly coloured mental challenge gives a great sense of accomplishment. Keeping the number of pieces age appropriate will prevent frustration.

S&G-BrainPuzzles

What makes Feva Foam puzzles special and unique? The dense foam they are made of means that little fingers have to work a bit at inserting the pieces. Great for enhancing tactile and fine motor skills. The thicker puzzles work well on uneven surfaces, like outside on the lawn. My kids love the colourful images.
Feva Foam custom make puzzles with an image of your choice. Custom making a family photo puzzle or using an image that is meaningful to each child makes the whole experience personal and fun. Trying to find the pieces of mom and dad could be a hoot. Each of the puzzles comes in their own resealable bag/sleeve. Hallelujah! No scouring the puzzle drawer for those missing pieces.

Image via Shutterstock
Image via Shutterstock

Puzzles benefit the brain in a myriad of ways. Jigsaw puzzle building enhances short term memory. Remembering where the corner piece was, or the piece with the red dot helps train the brain.

When children build big floor puzzles together it is a helpful way to learn social skills: Teamwork, sharing, helping and taking turns.

Spatial skills: This is the ability to make sense of, change and use objects and the spaces between them. Understanding how a puzzle piece relates to the others. This skill can be viewed as a unique type of intelligence separate from other forms of intelligence, such as reasoning ability, speech, and memory skills. Completing a jigsaw puzzle provides practice in this area.

Visual skills are practiced:
Visual discrimination is the ability to spot differences in shape, form, colour, size and pattern. This is a skill necessary for reading – discriminating between different letters, words and the spacing thereof.
Figure ground: Loosely means the ability to distinguish between the object and the surrounding mess it is lying on. This ability will help find the next Lego block needed for completing the plan. Or finding that other sock in the drawer.
Visual closure: When you see part of a picture, it helps you imagine the rest. People who see half a well known brand logo should automatically know what they are looking at. This is a helpful reading fluency skill, as it aids quicker word recognition.
Good practice in visualization. This means creating a mental image of the whole picture, or imagining the completion of the task.

Image via Shutterstock
Image via Shutterstock

Jigsaw puzzles help exercise both left and right brain. Certain brain functions are more dominant in one hemisphere, even though the corpus callosum ensures interconnectedness of the hemispheres.
The left brain thinks logically and follows a sequence while the right brain is creative, emotional and non-verbal; using images rather than words. So when building a puzzle, your left brain sorts and organizes the pieces and analyzes what is needed where, while your right brain intuitively tries to complete the big picture. This working together of the two brain hemispheres on the same task establishes brain connections.

Using both sides of the brain simultaneously helps the brain to move from a Beta into an Alpha state. Beta waves are associated with logical thinking, alertness and anxiety. Whereas alpha waves are created while daydreaming or when practicing meditation or mindfulness.

Puzzle building seems to stimulate dopamine production. Dopamine is a highly complex neurotransmitter involved with attention, movement, motivation and pleasurable reward. One study showed that dopamine neurons were inhibited by aversive stimuli. Dopamine has meaning in addiction and ADHD.

“Puzzles are used for training or as an interactive tool to entertain children up to 8 years of age. Quality high density EVA foam rubber with full colour image using FEVA unique print process. The shapes can be changed to suit your requirements.” – Feva Foam

Custom make your own design.
Custom make your own design.

Feva Foam rubber products supply on order: 

15 PIECE JIGSAW PUZZLE – FFPJP01
Custom designs per puzzle. Place any personal or school photo onto the puzzle. Great for parties or events.
280 x 380 x 5mm

15 PIECE JIGSAW PUZZLE – FFPJP01
Minimum order quantity 50 units.
280 x 380 x 5mm

S&G-Puzzles

DINOSAUR JIGSAW PUZZLE – FFPJP02
Min order quantity 50 units.
290 x 200 x 5mm

Free delivery in Plettenberg Bay. For more info on these and other great products visit the Feva Foam website. With special thanks.

Once upon an obstacle course

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All of life is an obstacle course. We learn this right from the beginning. The prince had to rescue the princess. She lived in a castle surrounded by a moat full of crocodiles, guarded by a dragon. The prince had to think up plans to defeat all these creatures and rescue her. He never said: “This is too much work, let me marry the girl next door.” That’s not noble or interesting!

A good obstacle course provides endless opportunities for learning and development. For instance: “How do we get across this river of crocodiles safely? We have these things.” They can then use whatever you have at hand to get from, say, the bed to the bathroom. Pillows, chairs, soft toys, books. The story can be much more elaborate: “Through the forest and across the lake, up the mountain, etc. etc…”  The key to the tower could be hidden somewhere in there.

Sometimes the kids take turns devising an obstacle course. The person building it decides the rules. “You have to crawl on the mat, spin three times, walk backwards on the beam, bounce in a circle, wrestle the shark….etc.”

Now and again I build the mother of all obstacle courses. We time ourselves with the phone setting. Each child tries to beat their personal best. Then we do it backwards – trying to see who can reverse the steps without mistake.

These are boredom busters for rainy days. Our home is full of great big exercise balls, balance pads and all sorts of paraphernalia useful for obstacle courses. Eyebrows lift when we show friends our new home and they see the balance beam, leading up to the mini trampoline, leading up to our bed!

Obstacle courses should never be too difficult to do. Mixing easy and hard components ensure that kids don’t feel defeated from the outset. Its ok to struggle with some things. Its not ok to give up before the start. Consider safety. Not good to bounce off onto the corner of the table.

image

Benefits of an obstacle course:

Gross motor exercise. The whole body is moving, bending, jumping.
Motor planning of activities. How do I do this? What needs to happen?
Spatial awareness of self in the space and how the objects relate to each other in terms of negotiating them.
Listening skills. Following instructions.
Problem solving. Especially with open-ended challenges. How do I get from A to B? How to get past the snakes or poison flowers?
Math skills and sequencing. Understanding ‘next to, in between, over, under’.
Proprioception. Where are my body parts and what are they doing? What should they be doing? Read more about proprioception here.
Vestibular input. Movement stimulates the balance system of the inner ear. It keeps us all grounded whilst moving, but the system needs to be trained through movement. Read more here.
Balance and coordination.
Innovation and imagination.
Confidence building. I can build. I can make the rules of the game. I can do this.
Memory. What are the steps? What do I do next?
Emotional self-regulation. I have to wait my turn. I have to decide how far to jump, what I can risk doing without being ‘eaten by crocodiles’.

Have a ball

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Simply owning a ball is an easy way to get children moving and active.

Sit on the ball instead of a chair for watching TV or working at a desk. Brilliant for proprioception and core activation.

Some fun activities to do on the ball:

Child on the tummy:

  • Hold their ankles and do airplanes with head up and arms wide while rolling the ball backwards and forwards.
  • Then do wheelbarrow with hands on the floor while rolling the ball side to side or backwards and forwards, still holding the ankles.

Child sitting on the ball:

  • Bounce them on the ball.
  • Humpty dumpty. Have them ‘fall’ backwards towards you, while holding their hands or pelvis.
  • Roll them backwards and forwards while lying on their back on the ball. (Lovely vestibular input)
  • Pull them back up to sitting, giving little help (Good for core muscles)
  • Move them from side to side – trying to push them off while they must stay upright (Stimulating head-righting reactions)

Sit on the floor with legs wide and roll the ball to each other.

Play tug of war with the ball, standing on your knees. The one who grabs the ball away from the other wins!

Standing:

  • Try to lift the ball overhead and throw it.
  • Bounce the ball with two arms; or using alternating hands for bigger children.

‘Falling off’ with mom holding on is a great laugh. My kids jump on the balls when they lie around the house or bounce them or bounce on them. Easy developmental fun.