Why Puzzle?

I’ve been puzzling recently over why schools should take time out of their very busy schedule to play puzzles. Well, in terms of its long term value I think it’s time well spent.

What is agreed amongst many educators is that young learners need the ability to understand how to evaluate unfamiliar problems and work through how to solve them. This is the skill of PROBLEM SOLVING.

Problem solving is the cornerstone of school mathematics. Without the ability to solve problems, the usefulness and power of mathematical ideas, knowledge, and skills are severely limited. Students who can efficiently and accurately multiply but who cannot identify situations that call for multiplication are not well prepared.

Students who can both develop and carry out a plan to solve a mathematical problem are exhibiting knowledge that is much deeper and more useful than simply carrying out a computation.

Mechanical puzzles represent the essence of problem solving. When approaching a new puzzle, students can immediately understand what the purpose is, but the techniques that may be required to solve it may be a complete mystery.

Because they are fun as well as challenging, puzzles can teach your children to love and appreciate the problem solving process.

Puzzling Nelson use a range of proven puzzles designed to teach problem solving strategies.

The vast majority of the puzzles are designed by the company ThinFun. It’s interesting to read their philosophy: We believe having fun is great way to learn. That belief is built into every ThinkFun game. ThinkFun games engage kids and educate kids. They challenge players and nurture the thinking skills important to growth and development. Our games aren’t designed to simply occupy a child’s time. They channel the natural joy and energy of play into a stimulating, family-focused way of building essential thinking skills. This philosophy has made ThinkFun a leading provider of children’s games. We’ve won more than 200 awards so far. And we continue to work hard to develop even more games that kids will play to have fun – and to build learning skills.

The feedback from teachers and children has been equally enthusiastic. Children love the tactile nature of the puzzles and the fact that they are levelled for their ability, while teachers see the underlying educational benefits and applications to other curriculum areas and real life problems.

In addition to playing, children are challenged to reflect on their puzzling experience, outlining the object of the game, its rules and restrictions as well as aspects of it that make it difficult. Children are asked to share what strategies they employ to help overcome the problems.

The possibility exists for children to investigate the creation of puzzles. These can be either polyform puzzles, or their own challenge from a favourite game they’ve played. In addition children may seek to apply their game in the real world using PE equipment to simulate the game board and people for the figures. The focus then becomes the language of problem solving - what communication is effective and what is not.