Importance of Wooden Puzzles in child’s overall mental development

Wooden toys bring back the charm of the good old simple days and the touch of nature for our kids. In today’s fast paced world, where the focus is on competing and completing instead of enjoying and nurturing the process, simple wooden toys help in truly helping kids stay true to the nature of play. Without the use of any batteries or lights, simple toys made of wood enhance a child’s imagination, allowing them to explore and surprise adults with their novelty. Not just the value of play, wooden toys also help to develop a close connection with nature, understand the process of creating them and bring about harmony with the toy.

Toys made of wood whether it’s pine wood, birch ply, steem beech, neem wood or any other local wood contributes to a beautiful texture for the toys. Besides this, the very nature of manufacturing them is sustainable – with no use of plasticizers, hardened compounds or any other artificially sourced products going into their creation. The use of wood, simple vegetable dyes or water-based paints and beautiful textures that the artisans are able to create is all that adds beauty and the age-old charm of a handmade creation to a wooden toy.There are a lot of wooden toys available in the market – from peg dolls, treehouses, clocks to puzzles and choosing which ones to offer to a child can become a difficult decision to make. While all of them offer their own unique value and enhance a child’s playtime, we are going to address the importance of wooden puzzles in a child’s mental development.Wooden puzzles offer a unique proposition to a child – where they are motivated to understand a way to solve them or play with them. In the process of playing with them, they inadvertently have to call upon a lot of skills – ranging from abstract thinking, reasoning and cognitive aptitude. Offering wooden puzzles that are age-appropriate to a child is very important, as with an easy puzzle may not stimulate them much and a very difficult/challenging one can make them frustrated and give up easily.

While solving these wooden puzzles, children learn about how to solve – thereby developing a solution-focused mindset, try different ways to solve – thereby developing an agile mindset and correct themselves – which helps them move towards independent and self-corrected learning over time. One of the concerns parents face here is what does the child do once he/she has solved the puzzle. One of the practices that educators recommend is to practice toy rotation for the child.

Toy rotation is a way in which the toy is kept away from a child’s immediate sight after play for a long interval before reintroducing it. This is a great approach as when the child sees the toy after a longer interval, he/she instinctively would feel like playing with it again. Secondly, the novelty of play ensures the child is looking at the same toy with a fresh/newer perspective and play with it like they would with any new toy at hand.

Offering these wooden puzzles to a child during formative years go a long way in promoting this growth mindset, a problem-solving attitude and an agile mind that is set for a lifelong learning .