Thomas The Train Puzzles for Kids

Over the last 2 years our family has been enjoying the wonderful adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends.

We had to invest in a train table and gradually me and my husband together with our 2 kids started collecting all the engines, freight cars, bridges, windmills and tunnels. This was money well spent, as it accounted for hours of playtime while I could fix dinner or clean the house, or write another hub. Until one day grandma bought us Thomas the Train puzzle.

Well I was initially very excited about the puzzle, hoping for another hour of entertainment for my kids when I was not involved. Later, however I was afraid that the 100 piece Thomas at the Carnival puzzle might be well above my 2 1/2 and 4 year old ones problem solving skills. Sure enough, I spent the following 3 days sitting down with my children and putting together this wonderful puzzle, sometimes thinking out loud that grandma could have chosen a less challenging one.

On the 4th day much to my amazement I saw that my kids had actually put the whole 100 piece Thomas at the Carnival puzzle together, needless to say they were very proud. This puzzle glows in the dark, if you keep a flash light over the fire works part, it looks very pretty, so every night we turned all lights out and enjoyed Thomas at the Carnival.

Later on I invested in other Thomas the train puzzles, happy to observe that my son was really enjoying figuring this out. Putting puzzles together has not been his favorite activity, however his obsession with Thomas helped him overcome the difficulty of finding his way around the hundred pieces spread around the table.

Solving a puzzle is a wonderful opportunity for you child to work on developing his visual system and motor planning skills. Vision, unlike sight, is not a skill we are born with, but develop gradually as we unite all our other senses.

We learn to make sense of what we see as we grow up. A piece of puzzle that combines blue, green and red might mean nothing to a child even though he sees it perfectly well. We, the grown ups, will easily, see that the green might be part of the meadow, the blue - part of the sky and the red probably goes to fit in the flower.

We love all our Thomas the train puzzles, some of them taking hours of cooperative play. Our first and most challenging one Thomas at the Carnival is framed and hung on the wall in the toy room and of course still glows in the dark.