Friday Post - Ravensburger Puzzle no. 089888

 

Illustrated by Steffie Becker

Two puzzles in one!  and for $3!  (I'm always thrifting, never buying new.)

They're pink and purple, which stinks.  And it's all princesses and maybe a prince or two (kind of vague, though).  But it's easy to put together, and due to the influence of her cousins, my daughter *loves* pink and purple, so this one's a winner..

But she also randomly tells me about how much she loves yellow, so she hasn't been completely hypnotized by the Disney machine yet.


One puzzle has a plain backing, the other polka dots, so you can separate the pieces before you begin.

Friday Post - Curious George "Great Big Puzzle"

You may recognize this as the scene from "Curious George and the Bicycle".  Notice he has the bag over his shoulder because he's supposed to be delivering the newspapers, but instead he made boats and floated them down the river.

Don't blame George.  Blame the man in the yellow hat for leaving him at home unattended.  Or, better yet, blame Bill for dumping his paper route on a monkey.  Seriously.

$1 at Value Village.  Not bad.  It was made by "Mudpuppy Press", 24 pieces, 24" by 36".

It was a way to tricky for my 3 year old to do herself.  But each break has a bug or duck or something going over it, so it isn't that hard.  She was delighted that I brought it home.  "Good job, Mama!"  She says, "Good job on bringing that puzzle home!"

Monster puzzle from the grocery store

I'm running or of steam on the Friday posts now that Halloween is coming up...

This puzzle was available at Superstore last year.  It's fantastic because you can mix and match the monsters, but you could also use it to teach colour matching.  It's provided us with hours of entertainment.  Definitely better than a lot of the Melissa and Doug designs.
It is very cheaply made, though.  It wasn't really sanded properly.  I would have easily paid a little more of it had been higher quality.

Friday Post - Number Train

These are pretty standard.  I got it for all of $2 at the thrift store.  This one is Melissa and Doug.  It looks like a square puzzle on the board, but it's just one long train with 20 cars and an engine.

It's been brilliant.  When we first got it, my daughter could count to 12 by rote, and didn't quite understand what she was doing.  She casually worked at it for about two weeks and then, finally, something snapped and she knew how to put it together herself.  Not only that, she loves to sit on the couch with the box and point to each train, counting to 20 out loud.  Shortly after, something else snapped and she was reading double digits all the way to 99.

There's still something missing; she obviously doesn't fully understand how numbers work because she's still a bit confused about the concept of relative differences in size, but this puzzle really helped her visualize what she's doing when she's counting.  I'm so glad we came across it.

Friday Post - Memory

This was another thrift store find.  It's pretty easy to find second hand copies of this game, but maybe not so easy to find copies with no missing pieces.  But this is such an easy game to make, and there is so much great free art on the internet already.

For instance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an online collection of art that is free to download and use for your art projects.  Input the search terms Fish Ginter N8 for the "Fish from American Waters" series of cigarette cards.  I've got to say, if you had the right resources to make playing cards, you could make a pretty adorable game of Go Fish.

Friday Post - Place and Trace

This is an amazing toy that I got for a dollar at the local thrift store.  Three large yellow stencils that hold four traceable objects each.  The objects are animals, dinosaurs and vehicles, they're three dimensional and can be used as cookie cutters or molds for play-dough or sand.

Currently, we just play with it as a puzzle.  Which is great.  The kids love it, and they're going to use it for a long time.

Made by Discovery Toys

Friday Post - Vintage Puzzle Find

 This is a Ravensburger puzzle from the 70's, printed in West Germany and titled "Spring Summer Autumn Winter".  It's puzzle number 623 5 415 1

There's nothing particularly special about it.  It's a really nice frame tray puzzle with interchangeable pieces cut in the shape of the objects in the picture.  I found it in the thrift store and it has no missing pieces!!!

 The kids are way too young for this.  I'll have to put it away for a few years.  In the meantime, I'm so stoked!

Friday Post - Toddler Fun

 "Toddler Fun" is a great free app for Android with no ads.  It has five activities.

"stars" is for making stars.  "fireworks" is for making fireworks.  "draw" is a very simple drawing program where the colour of the lines changes gradually, rotating through the rainbow.

What's really great is the connect game.  You connect the dots however you like in whatever order.  When they've all been connected in some manner, they explode into fireworks.

This game taught my daughter to look at where she starts and finishes a line.  It was way easier to do dot-to-dot digitally than on a piece of paper because of the feedback.  She gets angry when she tries to draw something and it comes out wrong.  This game doesn't punish her for being inaccurate, and rewards her with colours and sound when she finally gets it right.

We also use the drawing pad to practice letters.  It's so much easier for her to draw with a finger rather than a crayon.

Friday Post - Frame-Tray Puzzles

It's so important to me that my kids end up being puzzle fiends as well as book worms. So I've been trying to collect puzzles at different levels of difficulty.

Remember these?  My daughter can finally do Frame Tray puzzles, but it was a big jump to make from her 2 piece toddler puzzles.  We have three that we are borrowing from my mum.  I'm considering getting more from the internet.  Etsy has a bunch of vintage ones for reasonable prices, even.

Two of our puzzles feature Mickey Mouse.  What's interesting about it is that the art is definitely not in-house, and yet was published by "Golden", which means it's official.  This one has a Canadian flag.  Weird, no?