FFF: Enoch's New Peg Puzzles

 Just last week I decided to look for something that I could purchase for Enoch to help him with learning for this next season.  Though I'm not technically beginning homeschool now, he has shown an interest in numbers and colors recently, so I wanted to foster that in a fun way.  I stumbled upon this puzzle pack from Melissa & Doug, and couldn't help but love it.  (In the past few months he has begun loving puzzles enough to be patient in working on them, so I thought the combination might be good.)

They finally arrived early this week, and we have played with them everyday since then!  The three puzzles include:

• fish (skills: color matching and fine motor skills)
• numbers (skills: number recognition and counting objects beneath each number, like three fish under "3")
• alphabet (skills: letter recognition and matching letters with pictures beneath each piece, like a duck under "D")

Right now, the fish puzzle is the easiest for Enoch.  He can complete this one by himself and enjoys doing it over and over since it's so simple (we don't stress out about matching the colors every time).  The number puzzle is slightly more challenging because each number has a different shaped hole (unlike the fish, which are all the same shape and size).  Since he already knew a few numbers really well (6, 9), this puzzle wasn't incredibly difficult, but he still requires some help in order to finish it (for instance he sometimes gets 3 & 8, 1 & 7, or 2 & 5 mixed up).  The alphabet puzzle is the most challenging of the three.  Since there are 23 little pieces, each with its own specially shaped hole, Enoch really needs lots of help and encouragement with this one, otherwise he gets frustrated.  Typically I have him pick a letter and then I tell him what object (on the puzzle board) to look for so that he knows where to put the letter.  And then I say the letter's name and the object's name a few times together.  Right now he has a few favorite letters: D, F, N, O, U, W, X, Z, mainly because he likes the pictures underneath them, I suppose.  

Anyway, I've been so pleased with this purchase, that I'd highly recommend it to other parents of toddlers who want to have fun learning these skills!  In my experience, these Melissa & Doug wooden puzzles hold up well over time too, which is a definite plus!  They also have other packs of peg puzzles, like this one, which I'm sure would lead to many more hours of puzzle fun as well.   :)

Here's a video of Enoch playing with the fish puzzle.  One interesting thing that I've noticed regarding his fine motor skills (which also shows up in this video) is that Little Guy typically begins putting a piece into the puzzle with his right hand, but if his right hand can't quickly do it, he'll switch to his left hand, with which he seems to have more patience.  Interesting, huh?