Puzzle: An Interactive Guide to Intriguing Puzzles and Games is this month’s featured 
activity kit. Filled with puzzles and games, this special folder allows for hours of fun brain power testing activities. Featuring twelve challenging and ingenious games, this kit is designed to test young readers’ puzzle-solving skills.
Intended for children ages 9 and up/grade levels 4-6, this kit includes a sixteen page puzzle guidebook with an introduction to puzzles and instructions on how to make, solve, and play with the puzzles in the activity kit. When players are ready, they may press out the pieces for Composite Cube, a box full of puzzles to solve – including Number Wheel Puzzle, Three-Sided Maze, Strips of Color Puzzle, Packing Puzzle, Dancing Squares Puzzle, and Nothing Matching Puzzle. Other fun and interactive games include: Obelisk of Gold, Metropolis Game, Vanishing Square, Winning Dice Game, Figure It Out Game, Matching Pairs Game, Magic Wheel Puzzle, Five-by-Five Puzzle, Disappearing Faces, Color Shape Game, and Tri-Domino Game. This kit also includes a solutions book providing possible answers for those challenging games.
Puzzles provide many learning benefits for the child’s mind and cognitive development. The manipulation of puzzle pieces may improve hand-eye coordination, and as a child looks at various pieces and figures out where they fit or don’t fit, this encourages problem-solving skills. Recalling size, color and shape of various pieces may also enhance memory and strategy development.
Puzzle can be enjoyed in the classroom within small groups. This activity kit is currently on display on the ground floor of the OISE Library, next to the Circulation Desk. Please feel free to check it out! For more activity kits similar to Puzzle, please see the OISE Library K-12 Manipulatives Database or browse the 3rd floor of the OISE Library.
