Puzzles & Speech-Language Development

Puzzles serve as great tools for modeling language and promoting speech-language development in young children. Like many play-based activities with your child, puzzles naturally lend themselves to rich language opportunities, as children build an understanding of and describe shapes, colors, sizes, and actions while manipulating puzzle pieces. Moreover, puzzles provide a structured and interactive platform for enhancing vocabulary, grammar, and expressive language skills. By encouraging verbal communication and reinforcing key language concepts, puzzles are a great option when playing with your little one at home. Read on to learn the benefits of puzzle play with your child and tips for encouraging speech and language development.

Benefits of Puzzles on Speech-Language Development

• Repetition for Language Modeling- Puzzles have multiple pieces providing the opportunity for repetition of language modeling and many opportunities for your child to communicate.
  

• Vocabulary- Puzzles expose children to new vocabulary with a variety of animals, objects, activities, etc. Puzzles are typically categorized so it also helps to make associations, understand relationships between words, and more. For example, a puzzle may be all "farm animals" or "shapes" helping children begin to understand the groups of items. Puzzles also reinforce spatial vocabulary concepts (e.g., next to, under, on top) and describing words (e.g., big, fast, brown, an animal).
  

• Expanding Utterance Length- Puzzles, like many other play activities, provide the opportunity to help your child expand their utterance length, or the number of words they are putting together when they're communicating. A simple way to do this is to add 1 word to your child's utterance (explained more below).
  

• Following Directions & Problem Solving- Puzzles help to build a child's ability to follow directions especially as the puzzles become more complex and a sequence is helpful in solving. Working on puzzles also encourages critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
  

• Puzzles for All Ages & Stages- When purchasing puzzles, you have a wide range of options, ensuring suitability for every child. With various types available, including those featuring large knobs, small knobs, sound effects, matching images, and jigsaw formats, you can select a puzzle that caters to your child's current developmental abilities and fosters growth.
  

Tips for Puzzle Play at Home

• To encourage your child to request for more, after giving them the first piece, hold onto the remaining puzzle pieces to encourage your little one to communicate to you that they want more pieces. You can also put the pieces in a see-through container and have them nearby so that your child can see the pieces and need to ask for "more," "puzzle," or "help," to get them out.

• To promote the usage of longer utterance length, you can repeat your child's message and add more words. For example, if they’re at the one-word utterance level (e.g., “dog”), you can repeat and add 1 word, “Brown dog,” or “dog run,” while making the puzzle piece run. If your child is at the phrase level and says, “Go dog,” you can add a word or two by stating, “go brown dog,” or “go fast brown dog”. By adding only one to two words to your child's utterance, you are showing them how they can use more words in their message without giving them a challenging and unrealistic expectation of a lengthy sentence.

• Remember to meet your child where they are at and reinforce all forms of communication. You want to avoid children becoming frustrated when they request in their own way. Often times early on, children are communicating in a way that we can’t always understand which can lead to frustration and acting out when they aren’t heard. If they reach towards another puzzle piece and look at your eyes, this is communicative intent. This shows that your child wants the desired item and is looking to you to let you know, they just may not be ready to verbally communicate yet. You can reinforce their request by giving them the next piece and modeling how you want them to request “puzzle” or “pig” (name the piece). Another child may say, “puh,” and point to the puzzle piece. Praise them for asking for the puzzle and model the full word while handing them the piece. By acknowledging this early form of communication, you are teaching them the foundation of turn-taking in communication and encouraging them to continue to indicate to you when they want or need something.

• If your child is trying to grab the pieces from your hands or lap (they want to do it their way), rather than trying to control the situation further (likely causing frustration for the child), you can say “Oh, you want more puzzle pieces! Here is another puzzle piece. More puzzle!” While handing it to them. By continuing to model this language and the example request for them, while you hand them piece after piece, you are teaching them how to ask for it themselves.
  

• To help build vocabulary, you can label the animals or objects that the pieces represent as your child is manipulating them and attempting to put them in the puzzle. Remember that repetition of language is important. You can label the sound the animal or vehicle makes also to encourage your child to repeat if they aren’t ready to repeat words. Children begin to repeat animal and environmental sounds as they are learning to talk. You can say things like, “Cow! Cow says moo. You have the cow. Cow goes in the puzzle!” You can also teach vocabulary by describing the animals and using words like 'big, slow, fluffy, stinky, loud, brown, happy' (i.e., color words, size words, and other describing words).

• Choose puzzles with sound effects to teach animal and environmental sounds and encourage your child to repeat the sounds. Children learn to use sounds and words by listening and repeating us, so we can encourage this early on with simple sound combinations like, "Moo, baa, vroom," and "buzz".
  

• If your child is struggling to get the puzzle piece placed correctly, you can show them how to ask for help by verbally modeling the word “help” while assisting them. I like to help them with little steps first such as pointing to where it goes, telling them to turn the piece, etc, and at last resort, I will hand-over-hand physically help them put the piece in. This can help promote independence and confidence while still teaching them how to ask for help.

Puzzles are toys that most people already have in their house and children love to play with. These strategies above can help to promote speech and language development in your child while you're playing with them!

Below are some of my favorite puzzle picks for building language! You can click on the images to be linked to Amazon. (These are affiliate links)

If you think that your child has a speech and/or language delay or disorder, please speak to your pediatrician. Your child may require skilled intervention by a Speech-Language Pathologist.