I think most mothers can agree that they feel a sense of pride when someone compliments them on their child, whether it is how cute they are, or well behaved, sweet or intelligent. It is nice to hear. I have been told for a long time how smart our daughter is.  I have even had a few friends of ours with children ask for our secrets. I would like to take all the credit for it, but I do think much of it she was just born with. Of course we want to help our little one’s mind along & we do so by reading to her often, answering her never ending list of questions and by doing puzzles.

Kids learn to love puzzles from an early age. What’s not to love? They are bright & colorful with lots of pieces to play with and fun pictures. Puzzles aid in developing their fine motor skills, hand eye coordination and cognitive thinking. One thing that they taught me was I should not underestimate my child’s ability to learn based on her age.

At only two years of age my daughter knows all of her U.S states. She knows them by shape, location & name. She learned all of this from doing a puzzle. When we received the foam puzzle as a gift, I never imagined that she would actually be able to do it, but I would take it apart and rebuild it with her daily, pointing out and naming the states as I went. So sufficed to say we were shocked the day that she corrected her uncle as he was trying to place Idaho in the wrong spot. “No Uncle Pete, Idaho goes next to Washington.” From that day on she did her puzzle on her own without mommy’s help.

Don’t mind the fact that Massachusetts is missing.

From there we continued with the geography lessons. We introduced a new puzzle with all of the countries. The countries were all represented by animals indigenous to their region. “Look mama, the Panda bear lives in China.” Yes it does, baby. Yes it does. We now try to teach her everything regardless of how advanced it might seem.  I will never underestimate my child again.