From toddlers to adults, people love to solve puzzles. Puzzles are intriguing, the goal is clear and when you solve them, you get that sense of accomplishment that makes us all feel good about ourselves. Preschoolers can play with puzzles without even realizing how many skills they are developing. In order to solve a puzzle of any kind, your child needs to stop and think about how to go about reaching her goal. When using a board puzzle, she develops a strategy on how she will try to place each piece in the correct space in order to make all of the pieces fit.

She uses her problem-solving skills by developing solutions in order to accomplish completing her goal, just as she will use these skills during the course of her adult life. Puzzles can help a preschooler develop important cognitive skills. Your child will be asked to take step-by-step directions during his impending school career, and puzzles help him develop the ability to accomplish goals one step at a time and to understand why certain tasks need to be done in this manner. They can also help your preschooler develop visual spatial awareness because of the many colors, shapes and themes they come in. This activity involved your preschooler in putting pieces of a chicken together. There were a variety of puzzles, so each time your little one attempted to put the pieces together, he had to start all over again with the same puzzle broken into different shaped pieces.