Give your child the opportunity to work on spatial awareness with this simple and beautiful DIY nature puzzle. Children will love manipulating the pieces of nature to make them fit inside the shape! You can keep this activity fun and fresh by adding new seasonal pieces of nature from your area to the puzzle.
Children need opportunities to play with puzzles to help teach the concept of spatial awareness. Spatial awareness refers to a person’s recognition of how he or she, or an object, interacts with a space. It’s being able to fit items into an environment.
Playing with puzzles helps build spatial awareness skills. A child is required to determine which piece goes where and then manipulate the piece to get into the shape.
Ready to help your children build their spatial awareness skills?! Here’s what you’ll need..
Supplies:
- Roll of paper
- Marker
- Nature- We used stones that we collected from the beach, but you can use whatever you have available to you! Use just one type of nature or a mixture of sticks, stones, moss, seashells, etc.
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*If you love this post, check out 10 Nature Heart Activities for Kids!*
Here’s What We Did:
Make a shape outline. Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, so I outlined a random wooden heart container that we have in our house.
Put your pieces of nature around the heart. We used our beautiful collection of rocks from Lake Michigan for this activity, but you can use whatever you have available to you!
I worked alongside my boys with this activity. I practiced using vocabulary words like: flip, move, turn, rotate, under, below, above and in between. The boys quickly caught on and started using the same language:)
Leo loved picking up the small pebbles and placing them in between the larger rocks to fill the white spaces. This is great fine motor and hand-eye coordination practice!
There where also many times that the boys had to problems solve because the stone that they picked up didn’t fit in the spot they were aiming for. They quickly found new spots, but this got more difficult as the heart shape filled up with stones.
My first graders was a big fan of picking up larger rocks and making them fit in the “just right” space. He would pick up larger stones and move them around until he found the perfect spot.
As we neared the finish line, the boys make a stone frame around the heart!
I have to say, this activity looks beautiful when complete!
When you are finished, just take the stones off the heart and try again! I love this activity because no two puzzles will ever turn out the same.
Pin this activity to save it for later!
I hope you give this activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.
∼Tara
