Puzzling

For the past few weeks, my kids have been fairly obsessed with puzzles...perhaps most particularly Seth.  It's pretty amazing, given that Seth is the boy who could not do a two-piece puzzle 18 months ago, that they're working on increasingly difficult puzzles.

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Here they are working on a 500-piece puzzle that was pretty tough.  I usually sat with them, but the kids did all of the work themselves while we chatted or while I read out loud to them.

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Can you see the look of mischief and intent in Matthew's eye?  He knows that Seth doesn't particularly like being kissed by his siblings, so...

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...he got him...much to Seth's disgust!

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Putting in the last pieces of the 500-piece tiger puzzle

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They were pretty proud of themselves for completing the 500-piecer below...and were quickly wanting to head to Target to buy the 750-piece puzzle that they had spotted two weeks earlier.

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Starting the 750-piecer.  Again, I didn't touch the puzzle...it was all them.  Lizzie likely did about 10-15% of the puzzle, but I could see her skills progressing every hour...it was cool.

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Progress being made...

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...and victory upon completion...750 pieces!

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During these puzzle obsession weeks, the kids have also been working on puzzles by themselves.  Here's Matthew working on a 400-piece puzzle that's quite difficult - there are limited numbers of colours, which makes this puzzle harder, and the pieces vary in size, too!

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I caught his look just after he put his final piece in...he was thrilled!

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Contemplating success!

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Confirming that this puzzle is a picker-upper.

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Seth did quite a few 100-200 piece puzzles...here he is with three of them.

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I can speak from the experience of having completed this puzzle before that this 300-piece Christmas puzzle is not easy...and he did it.  I haven't told him this, but he completed it pretty much as quickly as I did at Christmas time!

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This was a 300-piece puzzle that he also completed almost as fast as I did the week before!

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The Seth decided to tackle the hard 400-piecer that Matthew had just completed.  And the kid did it!! Even though his face in the 2nd picture below doesn't look too ecstatic, believe me he was!  He was very proud of himself!

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Even Lizzie was totally into puzzles, too.  Here she is with four of her completed 100-piece puzzles.

The kids have started a 1,000-piece puzzle that a friend loaned to us, but I'm thinking it's going to be too hard...already Matthew and Lizzie are a little overwhelmed and Seth's the only one working on it at the moment.  Not only are there a lot of pieces, but two other factors make it extremely difficult.  First, the colours are all in the brown tones, which obviously makes it very hard.  And second, the puzzle is called a photo-mosaic; this means that each of the 1,000 pieces is a tiny photograph in itself - the tiny photos are all of lions, tigers and leopards, and the whole puzzle together looks like a slightly blurred picture of a male lion.  I'm going to be working with Seth (and the other kids, if they want to participate) on this one but so far it's taken us about three hours' work just to complete the outside edges.  I'm not convinced that this is one that's going to get done and I don't really want to devote the entire summer to it...but we'll see!  In the meantime, it's really fun seeing the kids so engrossed in puzzles.