The puzzle master

Since Alyssa was just over a year (I think), she has loved doing puzzles. Now as you can imagine, her first puzzles were pretty basic. The very first one had 8 different animals and when you put the right piece in the hole, the corresponding animal noise sounded. She loved (and still does love) that puzzle, but she was ready to move beyond that. She has moved up doing the shape sorter puzzle blocks...and then other ones where the pieces fit together. She enjoys her really cool little bench puzzle Auntie Stacy got her for Christmas and her train puzzle, but even those were getting too easy. So we treated her this weekend to a "big girl puzzle". You know the kind...no wooden pieces with "handles" that fit into pre-cut slots, only pieces with parts of a bigger picture. She was so excited to put it together.

She needed a little help, so we guided her through separating the pieces into edges and middles, putting together the frame, trying to match colors up, looking at the picture as a comparison, etc., etc. and she did it. She did it two different times yesterday with really only our guidance, not so much our help. She's so proud of herself. Maybe you can see a little of that pride in this picture:



Through the process, we discovered that puzzles like this are best put together on the kitchen table, not the coffee table. It's not that her puzzle doesn't fit on the coffee table, but the coffee table is within Lauren's reach (note Lauren's little devilish grin in the background of the picture too!). As Alyssa now says "I do puzzles up high so Lauren not get it." Maybe it's time that we try to introduce Lauren to the fun of putting together a puzzle, although I'm not sure her attention span is quite long enough - we'll see!