Jigsaw Puzzle is a fun optional award for Eager Beavers. Your crafty kids will enjoy glueing, cutting, drawing and coloring their very own puzzles!
Story: Lia & Luís: Puzzled!
Ana Crespo’s book Lia & Luís: Puzzled! is a great introduction to jigsaw puzzles. Lia and Luís receive a package from the their grandma in the mail. It’s a puzzle! They learn to solve the puzzle to find a message from their grandma. I’m guessing most of our Eager Beavers have put many (small) puzzles together by this point in their lives, but if they haven’t, they will learn how to put together a puzzle while listening to this book. Giovana Medeiros’ illustrations are colorful and lovely, and the text to picture ratio is great for Eager Beavers. This book is not needed to fulfill requirements, but it will add to your meeting if you have time for it.
Craft: Paste and Cut Puzzle
Fulfills Requirement #1: Glue Picture to poster board and cut into 3 pieces of various shapes.
To prepare, I printed a variety of animal pictures on card stock and cut them out with my paper trimmer. (Pictures are in the printable pack below.) I don’t have poster board like the requirement suggests, but I do have comic book boards. Each beaver choose one picture and glued it to a half board. Since glue stick dries quickly, the kids could cut their puzzle right away. If you use liquid glue, you’ll want to plan for drying time.
The requirement is to cut the picture into 3 pieces of “various shapes.” I noticed after the meeting, that my crew felt three pieces were not enough! I think they also called in parent-reinforcements to help with the cutting after cutting a few pieces – poster board and comic book board are hard to cut with safety scissors!
Game: Seek and Solve Puzzle
Fulfills Requirements #2 & 3
I’m not certain exactly what activity the creator of this award imagined to fulfill the requirement of playing a puzzle game. After searching for games to play with puzzles, I went with a tried and true favorite activity. Search and find the pieces. Our club has a number of jigsaw puzzles just waiting for this award. A large floor puzzle is ideal for this activity. Hide the pieces before the meeting. Kids will find the pieces and work together to solve the puzzle. Big pieces are ideal since they are much less likely to get lost. A floor puzzle of 20-30 pieces will also fulfill requirement number three.
Craft: Create a Puzzle
Fulfills Requirement #4
I ordered precut puzzles for this craft. Kids draw and color a design on the puzzle. Encourage the kids to color most of the puzzle. Multiple white blank pieces will be harder to solve than a colorful puzzle. For best results, have adults take the puzzle apart the first time (after it’s finished). The back might tear a little bit with non-gentle hands.
Extra Time
Need an extra activity? Have some puzzles waiting to be put together. Twenty-five to One Hundred piece puzzles are ideal for this age group. Obviously, fewer piece puzzles will go together more quickly and are more likely to fit into the space at the end of your meeting.
Story: Jigsaw: Mystery in the Mail
Jigsaw: Mystery in the Mail by Bob Graham is a fun book! A mysterious person sent the Kelly family a 1000 piece puzzle. They jump in on the project – which will take about a year to compete. And as they finally finish the puzzle, they realize the tragedy all puzzle lovers will face at some point in their lives – the final piece is missing!
Although the Kellys will never know where the missing piece travelled, any observant reader will be able to follow the journey of the missing piece. The search for and the return of the piece is extremely unlikely, but that’s just part of the charm this good book includes! I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I think your Eager Beavers will too.
Printables and Links
Have you taught this award? What did you choose to do for your puzzle game? Inquiring minds need to know. Please leave a comment and tell us all about it!