Personalized Gifts Archives | Page 24 of 27 | Personalized Children's Books

3 Ways Puzzles Can Benefit Childhood Development

Posted on November 18, 2015 | by KD Novelties

It has been long known that puzzles can provide a wealth of benefits for children in their early development. Puzzles range in style and difficulty depending on a child’s age, and even some of the most popular toys for infants happens to be a form of a puzzle – think of simple shape puzzles where children place the correct shape into their corresponding cutouts. As children get older, they are able to complete and understand more complex puzzles, and these objects are more than just fun, they can also be integral to helping develop several areas of a child’s intelligence and understanding.

There are three main skills that puzzles can help bolster in young children: physical skills, cognitive skills and emotional skills. These skills act as fundamental building blocks when it comes to a child’s development, and they can also help encourage social skills if children complete puzzles with parents or friends.

Physical Skills
The physical aspect of puzzle solving involves picking up the pieces and moving them around in order to make sure that they fit. This helps develop special reasoning and understanding in children, and can even help with hand-eye coordination as well. Moving the pieces helps with fine motor skills as well as gross motor skills, though this typically depends on the type of puzzle and the level of difficulty, but both aspects are vital.

Cognitive Skills

Kids Puzzles

These skills are activated as your child uses logic and reasoning to figure out how a piece fits into the puzzle at large and which way each piece will need to be placed in order to fit with the other pieces. It helps kids understand the physical world around them, especially since they are actually manipulating pieces to fit in a certain way. Understanding what the end result of the puzzle is, in order to determine how each little fragment fits in, is essential to problem-solving as well. Shape recognition is a great skill as well, though it may be more emphasized in puzzles for younger children.

Emotional Skills
You may be wondering how a puzzle could possibly help to develop emotional skills, but the fact that puzzles are an activity with an end goal helps encourage patience and goal-setting in general. The main goal is to finish the puzzle, but the task of finding out how each piece fits together provides additional smaller goals as well, offering smaller bursts of satisfaction and achievement along the way. Knowing that each piece placed in the puzzle is a success, kids learn to understand the benefits of patience – even if the puzzle will take work to complete, they will feel a sense of satisfaction after taking the time to figure out the problem and complete the puzzle.

KD Novelties offers personalized puzzles that can help encourage children to engage their problem-solving skills. Personalized with their name, children will be interested in the end result. Solving the puzzle and spelling their name will provide hours of learning fun, boost confidence, and enhance letter recognition.

Like books, learning to love puzzles can help open children up to other beneficial problem-solving games. Puzzles come in many shapes and sizes whether it is a math problem, a Rubik’s Cube, an intricate Lego set, or even a riddle. Puzzles can be both physical and not, but there are plenty of developmental benefits to introducing kids to puzzles early on.

How to Teach Your Kids to Read and Love It!

Posted on July 22, 2015 | by KD Novelties

Reading Stages for Kids

Reading is a skill that comes with age and practice. Typically, most children learn to read on their own in some capacity sometime between kindergarten and second grade. Some kids do take longer than others, and some children may have learning disabilities that can affect when and how well they read, but no matter what, there are several things that you can do to get kids jumpstarted when it comes to reading.

Just because babies and toddlers cannot read yet does not mean that you shouldn’t buy them books! Buying books can be incredibly beneficial to children and will help acquaint them with the book itself as an object with some importance in the world around them. This is why it is important to have books around from the time that children are first born. Baby books are designed to entice children with bright, colorful and engaging pictures and consist of pages constructed of thick cardboard materials that are meant to be played around with and explored. Having your baby look at the images in these books, flip through and even chew on the pages will do a lot for your child when it comes to getting them familiar with books in the first place.

Reading to your child helps, too. You can even start doing so when they are still in the womb. The act of looking through a book, reading aloud and relaying a story will help familiarize children with storytelling and can help bolster their communication skills, too. Kids learn by example and will not only develop an interest in books when you read to them but they can develop key speaking and enunciation skills from hearing you read aloud as well.

Playing games helps too! Kids love learning games and teaching children their letters can help acquaint them with the very letters that they will later see form words. Sound out letters and have your children repeat after you. Ask them to point out letters everywhere, whether it is in a book you are reading or on the box of their breakfast cereal. Once they get their letters down, you can begin playing and quizzing them by sounding out sequential letters and even words!

Familiarizing your children with letters, words and books is a great way to get them ready for school. Once they are in a place where learning is their goal, they will be able to learn to read and grasp concepts much more easily, especially since they are already familiar with the building blocks that they need.

KD Novelties provides personalized kids books for all ages. Get your little one their very own special book made just for them, either as an infant, pre-reader through intermediate reading level. Each book is sure to bring memories to last a lifetime.