Puzzles in the Garden

As you may know the summer weather here in the Uk can be very up and down, One minute its sunny and the next cloudy and the next rainy.
I try to make the most of each warm day we have and so we decided to take our puzzles outside and get some fresh air.

Puzzles are great for hand and eye coordination and fine motor skills. Also can be challenging and are great to help with concentration and thinking skills.

I live in flats with communal gardens. (Which by the way the paperwork for the building says we aren't meant to use) But we decided to go against that and grabbed a picnic blanket and some of our favourite puzzles to do.

Here we have a custom made shape sorter my mum and dad got her, a Orchard Toys pets two piece puzzle, a Hungry Caterpillar counting clock puzzle and a Melissa and Doug princess puzzle.

First we played with the Orchard Toys pets two piece puzzle. Lily loves the animals on this one and recognises a lot of the animals and will tell me what they are. She is quite clever to be able to know a few of the animals that match and can find the head and tail of each, but she struggles to push the two together yet. But its a great jigsaw for her to start out with and I know it will really help her puzzle skills.

Next up we have a custom shape sorter that my mum and dad bought Lily for christmas. I really like this one, it has her name on it and is made out of really good quality wood. The shapes are also quite easy to push through the holes.
Lily is getting really good with her shapes and is starting to match them up and push them in the correct holes, though sometimes she struggles with certain shapes that have to be a certain way around. Circles and squares are easy where as triangles and hearts not so much. The good thing about this shape sorter to is that the colours of the shapes also match to the colour around the holes. This really helps her match it all up.

Next is the Very Hungry Caterpillar counting clock puzzle. This is a really decent puzzle in quality as again is really nice thick wood. This puzzle is aimed at 3 plus but Lily actually does really well with it. I love it as it will really help Lily learn her numbers and eventually the time as well as providing good fine motor skills. Lily struggles with placing some shapes in but some she finds quite easy. She does sometimes place it in with the number upside down but thats because she doesn't know her numbers yet. She really enjoys pushing the clock handle around to.

Last we have the Melissa and Doug princess puzzle and this is the one that Lily enjoys playing with the most. For this one you have to dress the princesses by placing the pieces in the correct place. This one is great for Lily as it has little handles on. She does usually need some help and I will place the pieces in a order for her to put in and sometimes I will need to point to where they go but as soon as she has the bottom of the dresses in then she is good at putting the rest of the dress together.

It was great fun doing puzzles outdoors.

Have you even taken your puzzles outdoors?

Which puzzle do you like the sound of the most? 

Linked in the Country Kids Linkup