Top 10 Reasons Why Both You and Your Kids Should Play Puzzle Games
Many scientists and experts have been talking about the benefits of playing with puzzles for years. This surely goes for jigsaw puzzles, but solving puzzles of other kinds counts, as well. Unlike other articles about puzzles you might have come across, this one (besides many perks solving puzzles bears with it) presents the option of playing with puzzles in the form of a mobile app, not just on a table or living room floor.
Therefore, along with top 10 reasons why both you and your kids should play puzzle games, we decided to add top 10 puzzle apps you can download for free and play. Make sure to slide all the way to №1, because there are lots of fun things to learn!
10. Jigsaw puzzles come in mobile apps, too (cheap & reusable)
Besides being free (or cheap) and reusable, jigsaw puzzle games playable on your mobile device are very practical. So, children can play with them again and again whenever they want, wherever they are and without making a mess. You can also step in and make the game more interesting (and useful at the same time) for your children. Set a time within which to solve the puzzle and challenge the kids to try and do it within that time. This is a way they could learn how to work to achieve their goals within time.
9. Valuable educational tools
Jigsaw puzzles of maps, animals, numbers, letters, etc. are a great way of arousing children’s interest in different subjects. Kids are usually very fond of animals, so let them get involved with some animal jigsaw puzzles. Puzzles are also a great way of developing cognitive, visual-spatial, collaborative and social skills. Therefore, puzzles are a very useful tool for helping kids learn in a fun way and gain confidence in a range of skills.
8. Awesome way to pass time
Solving and playing with puzzles is also a healthy source of entertainment for both children and adults. Besides being very healthy and useful for human brain functioning, these puzzles are interesting and can hold your attention, keeping you engaged for hours. On one hand, this activity turns on lots of processes in the brain. On the other hand, at the same time it helps the mind relax by diverting attention from any stressful thoughts. Solving jigsaw puzzles also helps children to develop gross and fine motor skills, hand–eye coordination and shape recognition.
Read more about these benefits below.
7. Production of dopamine
On a more scientific note, experts say that our brains generate some neurotransmitters which assist in the overall correspondence within the brain itself and between the rest of our nervous system and the brain in order to instruct our body when and how to perform specific functions. Puzzles significantly assist our brain in the production of dopamine. This neurotransmitter (dopamine) helps you improve your motor skills, increases your concentration power, optimism, confidence, and enhances recollection. Solving puzzles provides our mind with a natural desire to develop a more conducive and appropriate chemistry, which can be useful in many aspects of your life.
6. When trying to solve a puzzle, kids learn to work with patience
Solving a puzzle is a challenge, and overcoming any challenge requires time and patience. Patience is also a skill that can be improved and mastered. By learning to slowly work through the puzzle, children develop that skill. Start them young! This way, kids also learn not to give up easily and keep persevering until they reach their goal.
NOTE: You surely know some adults who need to improve and master the skill of patience, so not only kids should practice it.
5. Meditation
In addition to Reason №8, where we wrote that on one hand, solving puzzles turns on lots of processes in the brain, but on the other, at the same time it helps the mind relax by diverting attention from any stressful thoughts, it is important to point out the calming effects of puzzles. Recent studies show that merely skimming through puzzles while contemplating the possible solutions, significantly encourages our minds to relax, where our brains basically go into a meditative state. This alternatively assists us to achieve a better mindset and tranquility, which goes a long way towards a better management of stress and stress related issues and leads to overall increase in productivity. Improved mindset and tranquility additionally lead to an improvement of self-confidence.
Working on jigsaw puzzles and focusing on the same image for longer periods can actually turn out more like meditations and induce a certain calmness and peace in the mind. For those of you who don’t support meditation, but you’ve been solving puzzles before, now you know that you’ve meditated before and that it helped you relax. Keep doing it!
4. Jigsaw puzzles help you to enhance your memory
One of the strategies both children and adults apply to solve puzzles is to remember and recall how the different pieces fit, isn’t that right? This boosts their memory. It also helps them to improve their ability to focus for long hours, which is a great asset in every walk of life.
Working out puzzles reinforces the existing connections between our brain cells and boosts the generation of new relationships, both of which greatly enhance our mental speed and thought process. It is also a verified fact that puzzles are beneficial for every age, seeing that the young possess highly malleable minds while adults and seniors are more vulnerable to recollection difficulties. Jigsaw puzzles are particularly useful for our short-term memories mainly because it needs a recollection of shapes and colors, plus an imagination of the bigger picture, in determining what pieces fit together.
Dinosaurs Jigsaw Puzzles on Google Play Store
3. Accelerated ingenuity
Brain puzzles for adults such as the ones we recommend in this article will lead to the individuals giving thought to issues in completely different approaches and although a notion might not be a problem’s solution, every thought that is outside the box assists in coaching and exercising our minds to operate efficiently in completely different ways. While solving puzzles, we gain the benefits of combining creativity with an empirical examination, and this type of imagination often leads to innovative, precognitive and efficient problem-solving skills in any of the various fields.
Brain It On! — Physics Puzzles on Google Play Store
2. Solving puzzles supports the entire thought process
Mind puzzles for adults (some of them are also suggested in this article) demand the ability to recognize the different parts plus the whole picture of the problem. This requires both good logical judgment and ingenuity. As left and right side of our brain function separately, it has been proven that the most satisfactory results in solving problems and acquiring new knowledge come when the entire brain (both left and right side) is engaged in the process. On the other hand, when isolated, left or right side of the brain is generally able to appreciate a specific aspect of any given scenario.
1. Jigsaw puzzles help you exercise both the parts of your brain
As mentioned above, the human mind has two separate hemispheres called right-brain and left-brain. Each part of the brain has its own specter of functions.
Left-brain thinks logically and follows sequence while the right brain is creative, intuitive and emotional. When you try to put together a jigsaw puzzle, you harness both the brain powers, and when you are able to use both the sides of the brain, you will find that your mind power is harnessed to its best and gets better.
Some studies have also noted that, while working on jigsaw puzzles, there is continuous activity in the brain that involves all its parts and cells.
Best Jigsaw Puzzles on Google Play Store
If you have read the entire article carefully, you should know now that you get immense and long lasting benefits out of doing puzzles on daily basis. Not just you, but your children, as well. In order to finish this fantastic story about puzzles in fashionable matter, we’ll tell you one more useful thing. A lot of research data show that people who play with solving puzzles have a longer life span. So, now, when you have the possibility of carrying a bunch of different puzzles in your pocket, download some of the puzzle games listed here and, along with the rest of your family, start training your brain wherever you are.
