For puzzles to be an effective teaching tool at first, toddlers should start with the easiest of puzzles. Those wooden peg puzzles are a great place to start, and as you see your child progress, introduce them to more advanced puzzles. Once children learn to talk, there are plenty of fun word games, easy in strategy and hardly a vocabulary challenge, that can keep them occupied and teach them at the same time. If your child has an iPad for fun, or some other sort of tablet, search "puzzle games for children", find one they may enjoy, and try and get them to play it. Even some video games, the nonviolent type, at least, are valuable educational toys for children. Older individuals often use puzzles to keep sharp. Educators use it to teach and review curricula as well as help children develop logic and reasoning. Occupational therapists use puzzles to help patients develop fine-motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and spatial skills (Spivey 1). Here are some types of puzzles that help encourage visual perception, fine motor skills, thinking, reasoning, and logic.
Old-Fashioned Wooden Peg Puzzles, or puzzles with large plastic or foam pieces that have a complete picture, are a good place to begin for toddler and young children. These simple puzzles can have anywhere from 2 to 30 large pegged pieces that fit into specific individual spaces in a background tray and make up a picture. They help foster hand-eye coordination, spatial concepts, and problem solving. You can find puzzles like these that help teach shapes, numbers, letters, animals, etc. Introduce one with fewer pieces first and gradually buy larger, more complex puzzles to keep the challenge fun and engaging for your child. Toddlers or children who have trouble at first should be given some time before corrected. Let them explore the shapes themselves for a bit, and hopefully they'll come to their own solutions, which will help them remember the lessons they learned more than if you solved it for them.
Jigsaw Puzzles are also great. They develop spatial concept and reasoning as the player must analyze the shape closer and closer. Trial and error is essential in these games, teaching patience and goal orientation. There are a plethora of educational puzzles that teach about geography, animals, and other fun and engaging educational pursuits.
Hidden Picture Puzzles develop visual skills as the player uses his/her eyes to find hidden pictures or subtle differences. These types of games are a little harder to find, but I'm sure there are books and children magazines that you can find online devoted toward these type of puzzles. Occupational therapists may use these puzzles to teach visual-perceptual skills, and children can use them too.
Word Search Puzzles teach vocabulary skills, visual perception and letter discrimination.
Logic puzzles present facts which players must piece together to solve the puzzle. These are difficult for many children whose reasoning, inferencing and predicting skills are lacking. However, with practice and instructions, children can learn how to organize facts by plotting them on a grid and deducing, or working out, missing information to solve puzzles. These types of puzzles, ones that teach deductive reasoning, are great educational tools.
Cryptoquotes are too much fun. They involve a key, which the player figures out through deductive reasoning, for a sentence or statement they must use their logic and reasoning skills to unveil. These are also powerful educational tools.
So, these puzzles aren't just "toys" after all. They're actually pretty beneficial when it comes to the development of a young, growing mind. Make sure you include puzzles as toys within your children's collection, and get them engaged in them. They'll do wonders!
Resources
Spivey, Becky L. M. E.d. CCC-SLP, Super Duper Publications Handy Handouts © 2010: Puzzles...Toys...or Teaching Skills?
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