National Puzzle Day: How Puzzles Do Your Brain Good

January 29 is National Puzzle Day! We’ve been putting together puzzles for hundreds of years. The first puzzle ever made was used to teach geography lessons and it morphed into a leisure activity. Although we just do them for fun now, puzzles are actually an excellent brain booster. In case you need a reason to put one together than just the satisfaction of matching thousands of tiny pieces to create a picture, there are other benefits of puzzles. Here are 5 ways puzzles do your brain good.

Psychological Prowess As far as building cognitive skills, children’s brains benefit the most. While their brains are still growing, puzzles help kids boost their memory and recognize shapes, as well as develop critical thinking skills.

Brain Workouts The same way interval training and bicycling works your heart and muscles to prevent disease, puzzles exercise your brain to keep it healthy and thinking. Researchers even believe it can slow the brain from breaking down as we age — in one study from the United Kingdom, scientists actually found a correlation between puzzles and slowing down Alzheimer’s disease.

Social & Emotional Intelligence People of all ages can use puzzles to help with social and emotional skills. The act of putting together puzzles is designed with a definitive goal, and the more difficult it is the more you have to persevere. Young and old, puzzles are an active example of meeting goals through hard work.

Both Halves Puzzles use both sides of the brain to fit the pieces together. The right side of the brain is where we draw on our intuition. The left side of the brain uses logic to solve problems. We need both intuition and logic to fit the pieces of puzzles together.

Brain Builders Puzzles are the ultimate brain builders for kids. They help sharpen fine and gross motor skills and gives them hand-eye coordination practice. Puzzles with large pieces are a good start and when the kids master those, they can move up to jigsaw puzzles to continue to sharpen their skills.

The Lakeside Collection has puzzles for every member of your family! While away the winter and celebrate National Puzzle Day by fitting a few pieces together!