Did you know that January 29 was National Puzzle Day? Started in 2002 by Jodi Jill, who was a newspaper puzzle maker and professional quiz maker, National Puzzle Day was created as a way to share her love of puzzles with the public. And it’s a great way to exercise your brain—so try a puzzle, any puzzle!
We took that idea and ran with it! Both our Life Skills Development and Legacy Day Programs at the Goodwill Center for Work and Training – Southwest Campus (GSC) celebrated National Puzzle Day the Friday before the official day. In the morning we started with multiple group activities, one in which participants and staff worked on multi-piece puzzles together. The staff had the participants focus on transferable skills that would benefit the participants in other areas of their lives, beyond just puzzle solving. For example, the multi-piece puzzles allowed the participants to focus on collaboration and teamwork, memory retention, sequencing, and social interaction.
Legacy Recreation Assistant Ralph D., a longtime bird lover, had another group of program participants put together a large-scale, multi-bird puzzle. Once they completed it, Ralph identified each bird and taught the group interesting facts about them. National Puzzle Day was such a big hit with the participants that they have asked for more puzzle days in the future!
We continued our puzzle day into the afternoon with a focus on arts and crafts. Some of our puzzles were missing pieces, so we collected them all together and the participants created beautiful works of art from those puzzle pieces. This allowed participants and staff to create unique photo frames. The staff then taught the participants the principles of design— contrast, unity, rhythm and balance, while assisting them in creating their own one-of-a-kind masterpieces.
The educational values of doing a jigsaw puzzle are quite amazing. The skills learned doing a jigsaw puzzle can be transferred to almost any part of a person’s life. You can never be too young or too old to puzzle!