Thinking skill

Jigsaw puzzles are a one-stop cognitive development and character-building activity. There are few educational experiences that have the potential to teach such a varied range of thinking skills, as well as other useful skills such as patience and perseverance. Learning these skills can benefit you at any stage of your life. For example, jigsaw puzzles can teach you:

Problem-solving strategies
Project management skills
Self-management skills
Visual skills
Cognitive skills
Character development skills and traits
Tactile skills
Social skills
Collaborative skills

Jigsaw puzzles are cheap and easy to obtain, you only need a small space to do them and very little can go wrong, provided that you don't lose pieces or let the dog chew them. If you are a parent or a teacher, you can follow some simple steps to help your children or students gain confidence in a range of skills that will benefit them in many areas of their learning. The key to this is transferability. This article explains what it is and how you can use it.

The educational value of doing a jigsaw puzzle is twofold: first, by building up a base of useful individual skills; secondly, by transferring these skills to other situations where they can be applied to solve new problems. A lot of research has been done into the transfer of learning from one situation to another. This is one of the key aims of all learning. If you wish to do some in-depth reading on the topic, go to Google and search for "transferable skills."