Puzzles games apps

Although many parents are concerned about screen time, research shows that technology can benefit learning and development in the early years. Educational apps and games can help kids acquire essential cognitive skills such as creative thinking and problem-solving. They can enhance memory and coordination, boost fine motor and hand-eye coordination, and improve your child’s social and emotional skills. However, for kids older than two years, make sure to keep screen time to a maximum of one hour per day.

Are Puzzles Good for Your Brain?

Puzzles are suitable for your brain as they can improve working memory, increase attention span, boost problem-solving skills, and enhance impulse control. Puzzles can improve your child’s fine and gross motor skills and foster pattern recognition. Use puzzles to teach your preschooler patterns and help them make analogies to everyday life. Using puzzles to notice patterns also promotes vocabulary and fosters logical thinking. Puzzles provide opportunities for hands-on learning. Studies also show that a child’s brain development is positively affected when they manipulate the objects in the world around them.

What Skills Do Puzzles Develop?

Puzzles can benefit your child’s development on various levels.

1. Cognitive Skills

Puzzle apps and games can improve focus and concentration, foster creative thinking, and teach your child patience. They can spark creativity and imagination, foster problem-solving skills, and help develop language. Also, they boost confidence as kids are rewarded when they finish a puzzle. Puzzle apps are an essential part of a manipulative play that can help your child understand the world around them. Children learn the best about the surrounding world through manipulating objects in that world.

2. Social and Emotional Skills

Puzzles teach children perseverance as they work slowly through the puzzle before they figure it out. A puzzle app can also boost their ability to set goals and plan strategies. Puzzles help develop healthy self-esteem as children are setting small goals and achieving them gradually. The ability to solve problems and overcome challenges positively affects their self-esteem and confidence.

3. Fine Motor Skills

Puzzles enhance fine motor skills and spatial awareness. Fine motor skills involve fine movements that require using the fingers and hands’ small muscles, and puzzles help improve these skills.

4. Hand-Eye Coordination

Handling the puzzle pieces helps a child understand the connection between what their eyes can see and what their hands do. To complete a puzzle, a child’s eyes and hands need to work together to find the piece, envision where to place it, and use their hands to make the piece.

How Do Puzzles Stimulate the Brain?

Research shows that solving puzzles increases brain production of hormones of happiness, dopamine, and serotonin. These neurotransmitters are responsible for regulating our mood and growing optimism. However, they also improve motivation, learning, concentration, and memory.

Do Puzzles Apps Improve Memory in Toddlers?

Yes, they do. Puzzles can increase visual-spatial awareness and help a child develop a deeper understanding of specific themes. Research shows that puzzle apps can be an excellent tool to help toddlers understand and memorize different concepts from their environment, such as animals, shapes, alphabet letters, colors, etc.

At What Age is Puzzles Apps Appropriate?

Two-year-olds can complete basic puzzles. Toddlers usually start with large knobbed puzzles or simple puzzle apps and go to more complex puzzles as they grow.

What are the Best MyFirstApps Puzzle Apps?

1. Puzzle Me 1 & Puzzle Me 2

Puzzle Me 1 is designed for kids two years of age and older, while Puzzle Me 2 is intended for children three years old and older. This fun game for toddlers can improve your child’s visual perception, hand-eye coordination, and spatial cognition. Kids play this puzzle by selecting the parts of the picture and dragging them to the right place. To boost your child’s language skills, play this game together and have your child name objects in the game.

2. Dinos Jigsaw and Shapes Jigsaw

Dinos Jigsaw and Shapes Jigsaw puzzle apps are fun for developing spatial perception, fine motor, and visual perception skills. The games are designed for children two years of age and older.

3. Build a Toy 1 & 2

These apps are an excellent learning tool for two-year-olds, boosting their cognitive development and fine motor skills.

4. Animated Puzzle 1, 2 & 3

Designed for kids three plus (Animated Puzzle 1), four-plus (Animated Puzzle 2), and four and a half plus (Animated Puzzle 3), these puzzle apps incorporate animation and movement into the classic puzzle game, boosting a child’s imagination, memory, problem-solving, and more.