Miya's Homeschool Update: Puzzle Skills & Empathy

Lately I've been homeschooling Miya mostly by using "puzzle games" method.

Allowing children to play with puzzles at an early age can greatly aid in their childhood education and help them develop skills that they can use later in their lives. Young children need to learn to grasp and hold objects. Puzzles can be a great way to develop and improve motor skills since they require a toddler to hold and manipulate a relatively small object.

A toddler can improve their cognitive skills too - in particular their problem solving and reasoning skills - with puzzles. They can help to teach color and shape recognition, to get a better understanding of the relationship of a part to the whole and can even teach them things like letters, numbers, animal names and more depending upon the theme.

Puzzles require a child to place an object in a precise location. To fit the piece they usually must manipulate it, try it out, move it around and finally fit it in its place. This is a great way to develop hand-eye coordination and to improve their skills as they master fitting pieces where they should go.

We have 3puzzles at home (ABC Chart, 123 Turtle & Bearly Personality) . But for now I frequently use "Bearly Personality" for our homeschool. It's a puzzle game, where the bear has been cut off to 3 parts; head, upperbody & lowerbody. So the child is suppose to be matching the body parts to create a whole complete bear.

Miya loves it.

But something interesting strikes me. On each of the bear's head, ada different facial expression. You know what Miya did?

She points at the head and will imitate the bear's facial expression. Then I teringat Hanz punye posting on teaching kids empathy, something interesting she wrote last year. A child that can recognize facial expression and reacts to it, does have empathy in them. (If any of you mommies tertinggal LRT on this topic, do visit Hanz post on her blog).

What's the importance of empathy? Well atleast you know if you have empathy, you are not a psychopath. LOL....

See the video...super excited kan anak dara ni? (sori gelap, malas nak edit)