How to Celebrate National Puzzle Day with Kids

National Puzzle Day is January 29th. This also happens to be the Lunar New Year this year. We will be celebrating both but chose to make our Puzzle Day craft ahead of time! Join us in making some fun kid led puzzles at home!

National Puzzle Day

We have always enjoyed puzzles around here. One of the best parts is that puzzles help our brains develop! When we are doing a puzzle, we are using both the right and left side of our brain. Overall, puzzles can improve problem solving skills, cognition, and memory. We all know that giving our kids problem solving skills can be such a wonderful tool. Our goal is always to help them succeed and without the ability to problem solve, it is much harder to succeed.

How to Make:

Start with a blank piece of thick paper.
Give the kids some markers.
Allow them the freedom to create a picture of whatever they desire.
- Encourage them to color to all the edges and create a scene with varying aspects.
Once their picture is complete, flip the paper over.
On the backside, draw any puzzle design you desire.
- For my 2 year old we made squiggles for a total of 3 puzzle pieces
- For my 8 year old, she drew a bunch of tiny squiggly pieces.
Next, cut along your lines to create an awesome kid designed puzzle.
Now, spend the rest of your time taking apart and remaking your puzzle!

Four kids assembling hand made puzzles in honor of National Puzzle Day.

Kid Led Activity

The best part of this activity is it is truly so easy to do over and over again. My son was frustrated with his first puzzle because honestly, it was hard. He did not color to the edges and cut a ton of tiny pieces. So after some frustrating times of suffering through putting together his puzzle, he asked if he could make another one. This time, we talked about the number of pieces, creating some pencils lines on the back to see how big the pieces would be. We also discussed the blank space and how much harder it is when you have the same color throughout a lot of the puzzle.

Check back here to see how we end up celebrating the Lunar New Year this year. In the meantime, see how we celebrated the Year of the Tiger.