Puzzles

This year I am trying to incorporate puzzles into our school routine. Puzzles not only give the picklets a little down time, it helps with their spacial skills, cognitive skills, analytical skills, problem solving skills and reasoning skills. And even more than that, puzzles help with imagination, patterning and thinking outside the box. And of course there is that boost of confidence when a puzzle is finished. Depending on the puzzles you get, your kids can appreciate art, learn geography, history, science and the layout of the ocean bed a million years ago. Puzzles rock and are going to be a BIG part of our school year.

For the beginning of our school year I got two puzzles out that the picklets needed to work on. One easy, one harder.

Ocean Critters teaches about life at the bottom of the sea. The picklets both picked it off in less than an hour. This was the easy one.






The other puzzle I picked is called Lost Art Michelangelo. I picked it up at Goodwill. It only cost me 88cents. There was a reason it was so cheap.


The picklets (and their parents) have been working on this for quite some time on and off.


There are about a zillion different possibilities but only one solution.


We are all pulling our hair out trying to figure out that one solution. The picklets even got grandma involved. She enjoys the challenge...go figure.


Since we have all worked hours on it I decided to get the solution from the box. Here is what is said:

Stuck? For the solution, send a stamped self addressed envelope to University Games, Lost Art Solution...

Yep. You have to send away for the answer.

Being as this is the 21st century, I googled University Games and contacted them via phone to see if they could email me the solution. The lady on the phone had never heard of this puzzle. She took my name and number so she could call me back after researching it. Lo and behold, by the end of the day I had a phone call telling me they hadn't carried that puzzle in years and no longer have the solution.

So, I googled the person who "invented" the puzzle and actually found a phone number. So, I called and he, himself answered the phone! I told him what I was looking for and he said he would email me the answer key. I received it later that afternoon.

I have yet to reveal to the picklets that I actually have the solution. I am not sure when or even if I am going to let them know. Who knows, I might just study the solution, sit down next to one of the picklets while they are working on the puzzle and put it together like it's nothing. That would show 'em.

(c) 2008-2011 Wicked Pickles-Homefrontlines