Are 4 Piece Puzzles a Waste of Money?

Why not get both? The 4 piece one shouldn't be that expensive. For what it's worth, my parents gave my firstborn a 5 piece puzzle once. It was harder than almost ALL of the 8 - 10 pc puzzles we owned!

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The question is how good is his spacial skill. If he's a smart kid and has Duplos he plays with then go ahead and get a bigger puzzle. I bought Melissa & Doug and Ravensburger puzzles. Our little guy figured them out in no time and he loved them.

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Make your own 4 piece puzzle and then see how he reacts to it. Print out a color picture, cut it into 4 puzzle shapes, and give it to him. If he keeps playing it over and over again, then go with the 4, if he gets it right away, I'd go with something bigger.

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as Victoria said, do both!

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A good an inexpensive way to figure out what he is ready for is to make your own. It's easy, and also really special and fun for him.

Print up photos you have taken of him, you, dad, grandma and grandpa, the family pet or whatever things hold his interest right now. Print them up to 8X10 size.

Go to Michaels and get some cardboard like you use to back pictures in a frame of the same size as the photos. Fairly thick, but still easy to cut.

Glue the photo to the cardboard and cover both sides with clear contact paper, or laminate them.

Cut into easy to put together pieces. Do some 4, some 6, some 8, some 12.

He will love them.

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12 pc is good for that age, especially if the pieces are very large. If he can't do it, that's fine, you help him with it. PLUS, you can flip it over and draw a picture on the other side. 2 puzzles in one. Make your own 4 piece puzzle out of cardstock to see how he likes it.

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I think a 12 piece would be too much for a 2 yr. old. In my pre-school classes I only had the 4-8 piece wooden ones so that if they chewed on the pieces they could be misted with the bleach water solution and sanitized.

It really depends on the puzzle too. Some puzzles have intricate cut out pieces that even an adult could have problems with. One thing I always did at my child care center was to take the pieces out and put them back in, one at a time, and outline the piece onto the puzzle back so it would be easier for them. This also helped me remember how it went when I had to clean up the toys or found a pile of combined puzzle pieces.

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I'd go with a bigger one at that age...and sit down and do it with him.

But all kids are different. Get what works for your little one :).

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Yeah, we never did the 4 piece puzzles... we started the kids off with shapes and letter puzzles, the fun wooden board ones, they also make ones with magnets and a 'fishing pole', THOSE are great... my girls loved puzzles at an early age, so we started with the ones with more pieces once they hit 3, and now they'll sit down with a 1,000 piece one at 6 and 8... my 2 year old son has zero interest in them right now, except the one with the airplane piece that he flies around, go figure ;)

There are some neat four-piece block puzzles which feature 6 different scenes (one picture on each side of the block); might be a fun one to grow into.

Jigsaw puzzles are a tough one. It really varies on the child and their level of skill. Does anyone you know have a four-piece puzzle you could try, or could you put out a "Wanted" on Freecycle for something like this. It's really hard to tell with individual kids. I didn't buy any of those for my son, personally, but there wasn't any reason behind it... I just figured I had other items which would suit. You can also make simple puzzles by gluing a picture on a piece of cereal-box cardboard, then when it's dry, cut it into a jigsaw puzzle. Pretty simple and costs you nothing but a bit of time.

One product for this skill I would recommend is the Ravensburger "Animal Mothers and Babies" game. This set can be used as a matching game, a memory-type game, encourages language (naming the animals and giving their young proper names) and is a self-correcting set, so that only the matching cards will connect together. I have an older edition of this game which has beautiful, realistic pictures, so it's worth looking for it on eBay.

My 2.5 year old son can do 12-piece puzzles and has been able to for a few months. I don't think he's smarter than any other kid, but we do puzzles with him a lot and he enjoys it. If he really likes his other puzzles I think it is worth a try. If he gets frustrated just put it away for a few months and then try again. My son also really liked this type of puzzle http://www.amazon.com/Infantino-156-034-My-First-Puzzles/... which he can do all by himself now, but when he first started we would only give him 6 or 8 pieces instead of 20 and he could more easily match up the animal heads and tails.

I think with a 4 pc puzzle he'd be bored of it after one or 2 times using it. There are some really great Melissa & Doug puzzles for his age, or slightly older, 3+ that my 2 yr old loves.