Just the day after blogging about Little Miss C’s love of jigsaw puzzles I was thrilled to be asked to review a Jingle Puzzle. What freaked me out slightly was that as soon as we arrived at the local sorting office to collect the parcel LMC somehow knew that it was a jigsaw for her without either of us even opening the package. She happily carried it to the car telling everyone we walked past that it was a jigsaw for her to do.
More than “just” a jigsaw Jingle Puzzles are based on well known children’s nursery rhymes and songs and each box contains a floor puzzle, a CD of music (with track one being the song featured on the jigsaw), some stickers and an activity booklet. As much as I’d be more than happy to give or receive a jigsaw as a gift for a child, the extra components make it much more of a package and turn the song featured in the puzzle into much more than just a picture on a puzzle.
We were sent the Old MacDonald Had a Farm variant of the Jingle Puzzle and as soon as LMC saw the box she immediately knew what song it related to. The music on the puzzle passed her by a little bit, but she loved being able to point out all the animals on the puzzle and she instantly started colouring in the pictures on the activity sheets.
The stickers were an activity in their own right. Some are designed to be used on the activity sheet, but LMC instead decided to make her own picture using them. She was again very keen to point out all the animals on the stickers and also to ask me what some of them said on them. As some of the stickers are supposed to be used on the activity sheet they say things like “well done” on them and she seemed to find this absolutely hilarious – no idea why though, but if she’s happy then so am I.
Once we’d finished doing the jigsaw and stickers we put the CD of music on and LMC happily danced and sang along to Old MacDonald – she actually seemed a bit upset when it finished and they hadn’t included all the animals she wanted to feature in the song. The rest of the tracks on the CD have an animal theme to them and again LMC enjoyed them even though she wasn’t familiar with them all. Some of the songs feature quite a bit of children singing which drove me a bit nuts, but she enjoyed singing along with them. The last track is a story (Three Little Pigs) being read which she didn’t quite have the attention span for, so once the music tracks had finished she was quickly asking for me to play it again.
I think the idea behind Jingle Puzzles is a great one – I love the idea of combining the song theme with a jigsaw and having more activies around it. In particular I think they would make a great gift for a child, especially one who has a first interest in music. Retailing at £9.99 I also think they are very good value for money too.
Disclaimer: We were sent a Jingle Puzzle to review.
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