Category: Personalized puzzles

How To Keep An Active Toddler Busy

Posted on | by KD Novelties

Taking care of toddlers is notoriously difficult. They’re called the “terrible twos” for a reason, right?

Between the ages of 1-3, children can be difficult, especially since they are still learning to speak and communicating with them effectively can prove to be a bit of a challenge. Kids are constantly on the move, and their overactive minds are alight with questions and general inquisitiveness that keeps their hands roaming, their feet moving, and their energy levels at full capacity. As a parent, it’s important that you encourage their inquisitive nature while also keeping them in line, making sure that they stay safe and that they are also preoccupied so you can get what you need done, too. Here are some ways you can keep active toddler’s busy when you cannot focus 100% of your attention on them.

Kinesthetic Activities

The more stimulation you can provide for your child, the better. Try giving them colored blocks, playdough and other similar items to keep them occupied but learning, too. Color matching games are great for teaching children colors, which seems obvious, but it can also teach them basic organizational and special skills as well. Same goes for shape matching games as well. Playdough is a unique substance, and similar goos and slimes can work just as well, but the texture and appearance of these types of toys can introduce kids to their innate sense of creativity while also providing them with a highly stimulating activity.

Finger-painting

Finger-painting seems like a cliché toddler activity but it is a great way to encourage kids to be creative and explore their own modes of expression and exploration. There are plenty of mess-proof finger-painting kits out there, too, and you can even make your own. Place different colored paints into freezer bags and lock them up tight while eliminating most of the air from the bag. Place them on a window or a white surface so kids can play around with the paint, creating images with the negative space without making a mess!

Puzzles

Puzzles provide great exercises in logic, allowing kids to solve problems while actively using their visual imagination at the same time. Personalized puzzles is an added benefit because not only will the puzzle itself provide many benefits to your child but they will also learn their letters and spelling of their name. You can find personalized puzzles for kids on our website. You can also create puzzles of your own by printing out pictures from movies or shows that your child loves, or even make a copy of a piece of work that your child has created themselves, and cut it into sections for them to rearrange and place back together.

Get Creative

When you’re out of toys, games, and are wary of turning to television or mobile games, there are plenty of DIY solutions that you can whip up within minutes to help keep your toddlers occupied and actively using their brains. Doing a search on Google on Toddler Activities can return a plethora of blog sites with creative and unique suggestions that can easily be implemented at home.

3 Ways Puzzles Can Benefit Childhood Development

Posted on | by KD Novelties
Personalized Puzzles

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.