There are various puzzles made for kids available in the market today one of which are the Melissa and Doug puzzles. Melissa and Doug offer a variety of puzzles of different designs and styles. With this wide selection how could we pick out the kind of puzzle that is right for our child?

Here are some guidelines that would help us select the right puzzle that will work best for our children:

1. The child's age

The age of the child is very important in choosing a puzzle. There are particular puzzle styles that are designed for a child of a specific age. For very young children (ages 3 to 5) puzzle cards are recommended because it will teach them puzzle concepts step by step. The themes of these puzzles are about alphabets, rhymes, colors and opposite things. This is a good way to start, since kids at that age will find it easy to solve these puzzle problems because it is not complicated.

As for older children, there are floor and jigsaw puzzles with varying level of difficulty. It is highly recommended that you start with the beginner's level kind of puzzle with 10 to 12 puzzle pieces and let your child have a goal that once they finish solving a certain puzzle level they could move on solving other puzzles with more puzzle pieces. This way, we could teach our children to set goals and cultivate the value of determination.

2. The child's preferences in colors, designs and similar aspects

We must also keep in mind when buying puzzles what colors and designs our children fancy. Melissa and Doug puzzles offer a wide range of puzzle colors, designs, graphics, and themes for us to choose from.

Is your child interested with animals? Why not pick a puzzle with a forest or underwater theme. Or if your kid likes a specific kind of animal, there are also puzzle designs that focuses on one animal like dogs, fishes, butterflies, and horses.

Does your kid like to gaze in the sky and look at the stars, and then you should include the Solar System puzzle in your choices of what to buy.

We must remember that this aspect is important because if the kid likes the design of the puzzle we bought then they would be more interested in solving puzzles.

3. The puzzle's features

There are kinds of puzzles with added features that will further attract interest from our kids. The wooden puzzles of Melissa and Doug have features such as built in sounds and lights, and textured fabric. Those features are definitely a plus especially if our child is hard to please, the added features would definitely get the attention of the child.

In a nutshell, letting our children play with puzzles will definitely be an enriching and enjoying experience so we must be very careful when buying one. Let us keep in mind that if we just buy puzzles out of impulse, without thorough thinking, the possibility that the puzzles we purchases will just gather dust in our toy containers is high. So we must always have our children in mind when we shop.