Timberdoodle: Puzzleball Globe

I love Timberdoodle's stuff, so I was pretty happy when the company offered to send me their Puzzleball Globe so that I could try it out with my 6-year-old son. Adam insisted that a couple of his stuffed animals had to watch if he was going to put together a new puzzle.

The puzzle frustrated us a bit at first. With a 6-year-old's motor skills, Adam had a hard time holding the round puzzle up and fitting the pieces in at the same time. The puzzle came with a base, but he had to be able to see the pictures, so the first several pieces had to be done while being held.

We also discovered pretty quickly that the pieces themselves, many of them a blue ocean, were a bit challenging for him. But perhaps Timberdoodle foresaw that problem, because they labeled the back of each piece with a number. That proved easier for Adam. He started with number 1 and went through 96, figuring out how to fit each piece in as he went along.

Adam liked the large, child-friendly graphics on the globe, pointing out pictures of kangaroos and penguins and the like.

He became distracted about half-way through, when he quickly realized that half of a globe made an excellent house for some of his plastic dinosaurs!

But eventually he got back to work and finished the globe completely. Because it was challenging for him, I was a little surprised when it quickly became one of his favorite toys. He took it apart and put it back together several times over the next few days. He also enjoyed carrying the globe around and playing it while it was put together. I was also surprised to find that his 14-year-old brother and 17-year-sister each asked to take a turn putting it together!

One of the great things about this globe is that the pieces are plastic and, once put together, the globe holds up beautifully to the abuse of young boys. I know this because at one point Adam and his brother decided to make a game of seeing how many times they could drop the globe on the hard kitchen floor before it came apart. Surprisingly, they had to drop it several times, harder each time, to get it to come apart!

Puzzles can be educational in so many ways because they stretch your child's brain and improve the way his mind solves problems. While he's solving a puzzle, he's really teaching his brain to work in new ways. As your child solves a geography puzzle he is mentally drilling himself with physical facts, such as what country goes next to the one he has just completed. Unconsciously he is making a number of associations as he searches for the next piece.

Oh, in case you are wondering, this is a true puzzle. No glue required!

Price: $12.75

Put out by: Timberdoodle (Publisher: Ravensburger)


Video: