Brooke Wheeler, a stay-at-home mom to two young children in Gretna, wrote this guest blog for momaha.

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My youngest son, who is age 3, has been on a big puzzle kick lately.

He swells with pride after he snaps in that last puzzle piece. He’ll stand back and marvel at his work.

We already have several puzzles, but — since he has done them all so many times — they weren’t exactly challenging him.

Puzzles are great for developing cognitive, fine motor, and problem-solving skills. So I came up with something that would keep his interest in puzzles, without having to buy more.

I found this idea for popsicle stick puzzles – a super easy way to create your own puzzles.

Here’s what you need to get started:

Materials

- 4X6 images of your choice
- Photo paper
- Scissors
- Craft sticks
- Mod Podge or rubber cement

Instructions

1. Have your child decide what image they want on their puzzle. My kids picked their favorite cartoon characters. I did a simple Google search for those images. Other ideas would be seasonal images, their name printed in fun colors, etc.

2. Print your image onto photo paper.

3. Make light lines with a pencil, on the back of the image, to guide you while cutting.

4. Cut image into strips (a bit smaller than the width of your popsicle stick).

5. Use Mod Podge, rubber cement, or other glue, to adhere strips to popsicle sticks.

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My toddler son absolutely loved these! He loved that he could pick anything he wanted to be on his puzzle. The only downside was that my puzzle production wasn’t fast enough to keep up with his requests.

Although it wasn’t nearly as challenging for my 6-year-old son, I was surprised at how much he enjoyed doing the puzzles as well. The neatest part was that he could “custom order” his puzzle.

I purchased a pencil box for just $1 to store the puzzles in. Little did I know that would create yet another fun challenge. Because I had put all of the puzzle pieces in the same box, my little guy took it upon himself to take out each piece and sort them into piles.

Another great example of easy fun that can be made at home. Further proof that you don’t always need to go to the toy store to have quality fun.

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You can find more, kids craft ideas on Brooke’s blog,thewheelerweekly.com.

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