Thursday, February 9, 2012

Valentine Surprise Activity Box, Day 6 - Puzzles


Googling "Valentine's puzzles", I found a whole host of printable pages and puzzle ideas. It was difficult to choose just a few for a puzzle theme for our Valentine's box. But, I'm trying to keep the items in the box fairly simple, not overwhelming, so the children will take time to focus on, and enjoy each activity.

With that in mind, I limited the types of puzzles I placed into the box to four - an inexpensive store bought jigsaw puzzle, the 3x3 square puzzle I put together a few days ago...


...a few simple 4x4 Sudoku puzzles, using heart stickers left over from our card making day, and following instructions from Handwriting for Kids. The pictures below, on the left are the puzzles as the children will receive them. The pictures on the right are the solutions to the puzzles.

The idea is to place the four colored hearts into the grid, so that there is one heart of each color in each of the 4x4 grids, in each of the horizontal rows, and in each of the vertical rows. Once the children are satisfied with their solutions, they can peel and stick the hearts into place.





And finally, I cut a large broken heart tangram type puzzle from a 18''x18'' square of poster board (click here, and scroll down, for instructions). The children have gotten pretty good at putting together the seven pieced square, I'm curious to see how they do with an eight pieced heart.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

7 comments:

Christy Killoran said...

I love the heart tangram type puzzle!

Phyllis said...

Lovely, fun ideas!

Ticia said...

I can't wait to see what else they get in the box!

Fairyluver said...

These are such fun ideas i know my kids will love them thanks for sharing such fun ideas!!

Glory Bea said...

Ooh, this is clever. Thank you for sharing!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I am so pinning this for the next year. We love puzzles.

Lucky Dip Lisa said...

Thank you for the many wonderful ideas that you share here. I visit often and even though my kids are older than yours I can often come away with an idea or two I can adapt to suit. The suduko and tangram puzzles are one of them. Thanks!