We love to make learning fun, and for the kids not to even realise that they're learning something as they're playing a game is the perfect way. That's why I love this new Big Alphabet Jigsaw that we got from Orchard Toys, it's a great way to learn and practice our ABCs while making a fun puzzle.
The jigsaw itself is 26 pieces, one for each letter of the alphabet making is easy for children to find each piece that they're looking for. It also comes with a lovely big wall poster with the same design as the puzzle, so it's a great visual reminder of the alphabet that you can hang up for your child to see.
Both Ethan (3 1/2) and Ivy (18 months) worked on the puzzle together. I love activities that they can both do, so I was really glad to see that even though Ivy is a bit young for this sort of jigsaw she was still able to help. We were all singing the ABC song together, and Ivy was joining in for more and more of it each time we went through the letters.
Ethan knows the alphabet song, but he wasn't always able to tell me which letter came next, so we would go through them from the beginning until we came to the letter that we were looking for. So at his level he was working on ordering the letters as well as identifying the letter when I asked him to find the next one.
Once we had made the whole jigsaw puzzle we were able to go through each letter and say the word that begins with that sound. We were then thinking up more words for each letter and talking about the different sounds that some letters make (like vowels). Once we took the puzzle apart Ethan wanted to keep playing with the pieces indiviudally, so we lined them up to make simple words (like cat) and even added some of them to our phonics boxes to go with other objects that begin with each letter. We're definitely going to get a lot of use out of this puzzle!
* This is a review post, we were sent the Big Alphabet Jigsaw to play with and write our honest opinions about.*
