Upside-Down

Our library offers Discovery Backpacks for check-out. These backpacks contain a few books, a game, and sometimes a toy. They are grouped based on subject matter. We've gotten backpacks about topics such as bridges, vehicles, and the alphabet.

For the last two weeks (usually just one, but I renewed the backpack so we wouldn't have to spew sick germs on everyone at the library) Peter has been enjoying the dinosaur backpack. It had a whopping four books, three dinosaur toys, and four small dinosaur jigsaw puzzles.

Peter loves doing little kid puzzles. You know the kind that I'm talking about. The ones with big shapes that fit into specific holes, usually painted to match the piece that you've just pulled out. He's a pro at these. He had never done a jigsaw puzzle before.


Turns out, Peter loves puzzles of the jigsaw variety too. This is the first one that he put together. He did it all by himself. All four were this size, just twelve pieces. He has spent hours doing these puzzles over the last few weeks. Each puzzle piece has a shape stamped onto the back (square, triangle, etc) so you can tell which pieces go together. At one point he discovered he could do the puzzles upside by putting like-shapes together. That hadn't occurred to me. I depend on the picture to tell me which piece goes where. What kind of intelligence does that take? Spatial?

A jigsaw puzzle is definitely going on Peter's Christmas list.