Train your brain with jigsaw puzzles (Feva Foam)

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.