2.5 year old not really getting jigsaws and other similar toys

[nomorekisses]

I just wanted to know if my expectations are too high! We have a particular toy-thingie. Each side of two cubes has half a picture of an automobile e.g car. If you put the right side up, matching back and front, then it will make the noise of a car engine.

My son will constantly put the bits up of, say a car, but not in the right way (back to front, wrong way round). We have done this together a zillion times, and I keep showing him, but he says it's fine and why is there no noise!

Equally, with jigsaws. He just doesn't get jigsaws. He can do a 2/3 piece one, maybe a 4 piece, but only if he's done it a lot before - so I think it's mostly from memory.

He's a great talker, I think he's pretty bright and clued up but this seems odd to me, that he can't get these.

Is there anything I can do to encourage him? I don't really care if he doesn't want to do them (he's very physically active) but I'd like to make sure he can, if that makes sense

TIA

My 3 year old ds can't do jigsaws either. But he can do the ones where you have to put animals or letters on top of the matching picture ....if you know which ones I'm on about?! I just think jigsaws bore him , he would rather read books or be doing something physical. I don't encourage jigsaws enough either really but he's going to nursery in September so I'm sure he will have a go there.
Can he do a shape sorter ? Just thinking about if he recognises shapes matching each other.
I guess it's just practice

Hello.

My dd couldn't get the hang of proper jigsaws until she was 3.5-4years.

Until then, we practised loads with various wooden ones like these: encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTQtc07d_KSC-jfdkNSN3goIteF0Ol8X74ZQ_o8bGnifMnbAetXaA

Bricks are also good practice for 'proper' jigsaws.

My dd has a big assortment of bricks ranging from Duplo, mega blocks, stickle and wooden. Seeing which ones fit together, and which ones don't, helped build her logic skills.

DD can't do jigsaws yet, but her nursery counts the ones that you put pieces into as jigsaws. Can your DS do them?

Hi

Thanks all, that's really helpful.

Yes, he can easily do the ones where you put pieces onto of the slots (numbers, cars) the ones you're talking about here. He's done those for ages - I figure those are too young for him now.

It's this One - but with automobiles - that he just can't get.

I know he can't often be bothered - he likes scootering, kicking a football etc - but is this a set of skills that I need to work on? What skill base does this sort of jigsaw require?

He goes to nursery a couple of times a week. We've never spoken specifically about jigsaws - not sure he even does them there. Too many cars to play with!

Ah, just noticed someone talk about logic skills. So that's what this is. We have lego/duplo. What else can we get to help encourage?

Does he have train set stuff? My two 20mo are a bit rubbish at building things (blocks, mega blocks etc) and don't get jigsaws at all, but ADORE sticking train tracks together as well as actually playing trains.

I think lots of children that age don't really see any point in jigsaws, so don't worry if he doesn't seem to 'get it' yet.

Sorting things is a useful skill - shapes, colours, etc. That could be getting all the red cars, or separating the cars from the trucks, if those are things he likes. Or sorting in order of size - small ones up to big ones, or number of wheels.

Dominos are good for the idea of "joining up the matching bits", I used to have some where each number was a particular colour, which made it easier, or you can get picture ones.

Yes, all good ideas thanks. I need to work on this stuff. I resist the idea of being very controlling about how we do things - much prefering it to be organic, and for him to do things that he likes. But maybe we can find some sorting fun!

I have a 2.3yo dd who doesn't get jigsaws too. She won't even try - just says 'mummy do it!' and walks away. Likewise with her shape sorter she'll just take the lid off and put the shapes all in that way, though she knows all her shapes and can tell me what they are... I'm not worried though, apparently I was rubbish at jigsaws (still am tbh!) but have a first class degree (and an a level in maths) and was good at plenty of other things.

My DD wasn't interested in jigsaws. She would only do
4- 6 piece ones, until someone gave her an octonauts one recently. She immediately did all 3 puzzles in the box (one has 48 pieces I think). She's 3.9. Just needed a motivator!

She does lots of block play, building etc, so I suppose had the skills already.

DD (2.2yo) still can't do a shape-sorter or a jigsaw where you put the bits into the holes.

She can count to 10, recognise a lot of the alphabet, knows her colours, can draw with a proper pencil grip, stack blocks of 15+, sing songs, jump... frankly I couldn't care less if she doesn't get the point of jigsaws.

Huge jigsaw fan myself though!

Wow, I'm feeling like a lousy mother reading this..

All seems very controlled and pushy - surely at 2.5yr's old you want your son to be happy and healthy and having fun no ?

I don't intentionally "work on stuff" with DD, but her nursery does. By that I mean that they pleasantly engage her with tasks and might demonstrate how something works to her, all as a natural part of the nursery day. Part of this means that they identify her "next steps". I don't think that this is controlled and pushy if done in a calm and pleasant way.

I did notice recently that DD can recognise numbers up to 10 but struggles with 6 & 9, so we have played with some number cards and she is getting better at 6 & 9. She enjoys this and also holds up cards for me to identify the number and says "well done mummy" as a role play game. She also throws the cards all over the floor and uses them to role play her nursery system of using name cards for children to move between rooms. From her perspective it is all just playing.

I don't think it has to be "controlled and pushy" - it's not a matter of insisting that a child does jigsaws instead of kicking a ball around, if that's what they want to do. But there's no harm in having an idea of what skills they are learning from some of the things that they automatically do for fun - like lining up all the cars, or finding all the red blocks - and encouraging them a bit.

But if they just want to pile them all up then run round the room making aeroplane noises, then that's fine too