Our family loves puzzles.

Every year for Christmas there will be a puzzle under the Christmas tree.  Actually, I prefer to leave the puzzle under the tree, all wrapped up, until the day after Christmas.  And then, on that quiet day-after morning, there’s one present left to open.  Perfect for the after Christmas crash, we can just hang around the kitchen table, eat holiday leftovers and work lazily on a puzzle together.  The last wrapped gift is a puzzle – and we all know it – but no one knows what the subject of the puzzle will be.  (I like to match the puzzle’s theme to the previous year when I’m able.  Last year I chose from Amazon and didn’t pay close enough attention apparently.  I thought it was a kitchen cabinet/shelving scene with food items stored cleverly, almost an I Spy version of a kitchen cupboard.  And we love to cook together and we love I Spy so it felt a pretty decent match.  You guys.  Not until we were putting that puzzle together did we all realize that, yes, it was a kitchen cupboard scene, but more like a haunted kitchen cupboard with bones and guts and horrible creepy things poking out from the jars.  It was totally awful.  Hooray.  Merry Christmas kids!  Eh – who knows?  Maybe it reflected our year perfectly.)

You know, this post just got hijacked in hurry – did it not?

And now to reign me back in ….

We love puzzles.

Timberdoodle offered a 3D Puzzleball Globe by Ravensburger for a review and of course, I said YES!

 

 

The kids gathered around as soon as it was opened and began assessing the situation.

We all assumed it would be such a hard puzzle to put together.  We’d never tried a 3D puzzle at all, but it seemed tricky to assemble and to keep together as you built.

 

 

In reality, it was really fairly simple to piece together.  The backs of the puzzle pieces were numbered so you would know where to start in order to make a globe that actually fit inside of its little pedestal.  With teamwork, the pieces were divided into number order and kids assembled parts individually and then handed their correct numbers to the child attaching the pieces in order.

It was a great team building experience for them – we had a friend helping us too.  It certainly does not feel like school work.

 

 

It came together quickly.  The pay off was big – it’s extremely satisfying to assemble a completely round puzzle and to have it fit in its stand perfectly.

 

 

The 3D Puzzleball Globe comes in Timberdoodle’s Third Grade Curriculum Kit or you can order it alone as well.  I think it would make a great educational gift that a child would actually enjoy and not feel cheated out of a traditional birthday gift.

 

 

We unassembled it for storage and so that we could have the pleasure of putting it together again on another day.  You could just as easily leave it assembled and on display as well.  I’m sure that’ll be in our future here and there too.

 

 

____________________________