Sticky Pantry Puzzles

There’s something about puzzles that everyone loves, both kids and adults. Puzzles are awesome for brain development as well as improving and exercising cognitive skills, especially in children! These Sticky Pantry Puzzles are a breeze to make, literally cost the price of the food (which you bought and ate) and kids will be learning and having fun at the same time. As you can probably tell, I love to put things…that should get thrown away…to good use. Recycled crafts are a thing now, and why not?! They’re easy to set-up, cheap and always a lot of entertainment.

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Materials:

–Permanent markers

–Scotch tape

–Scissors

-Cardboard food packages

Instructions:

I’ve intended these puzzles for both of my kids, who are 2 and 4. So I’ve drawn “hints” on the back of each puzzle piece: a shape (either triangle, square, circle, etc. ) that correlated and matched with other puzzle pieces of the same puzzle.

Choose 3 cardboard packages from the pantry (when it’s empty of course). Cut out the front of the packages, tossing the scraps. Cut the flat piece of the package into as many pieces as you’d life. I did simple, 3 to 5 pieces. On the back of each puzzle piece, draw a shape that would match all of the puzzle pieces to one puzzle (see picture below, using different colored permanent marker for each different shape helps too). Now add a pieces of tape to each puzzle piece (also see picture below). Stick all of the puzzle pieces onto an empty wall where the child will have enough room to work. And let’s begin! The child has to flip over the puzzle piece, check the shape and find matching shapes to complete the puzzle. Explain that there’s three puzzle or how ever many you choose.

What is my child learning?

-Brain development

-Cognitive skills

-Shapes

-Colors

-Words

Puzzles are like weight lifting, except for the brain. They exercise and help improve nerve connections in the brains, and even build new ones. Kids need to use their cognitive skills, a.k.a thinking. This includes looking at the puzzle pieces, analyzing, processing and comparing each other. With these simple puzzle, young children learn and memorize colors, shapes and can even learn to differentiate letters of the alphabet.