The puzzle builder

Calvin has turned into a puzzlephile overnight. It started with those simple wooden puzzles where you match the animal to the picture of it on the board, some making the wierdest (most artificial) sounds that are supposed to be the animal you’ve successfully situated. We were very fortunate to have a number of them shared by friend TT, because, as one discovers, variety is the spice of puzzle life.

Fortunately too, Calvin has a wide variety of puzzles to plunder at creche, where the selection is curated and rotated around various themes, like transportation or animals.

But the quantum leap was a birthday present from FB, the cutest suitcase containing four-, six-, eight- and 12-piece animal puzzles. That’s like a baseball double play: animals and puzzles in one! He’s been putting them together all week.

This afternoon, coming home after a tummy upset at creche, I thought we’d give the Connectograms another try. We’d taken a few on the trip to South Africa, but they didn’t really fire the imagination at the time.

This evening was totally different. After working out how to connect the different shapes (right angles), Calvin proceeded to build the most anazing shapes, commentating as he went, and stopping now and then to explain that his ‘animal’ (French pronounciation please) had morphed into a new one.

We went from a tunnel to a frog, to an elephant, to a giraffe, to a dinosaur. And at each new arrival point, I was asked politely to kiss the animal on what was the new nose.

I provided a little help in constructing a base so that the ‘final’ product of this evening’s labours could stand by itself. Then we had to place it on the back of the sofa so it too could enjoy the bedtime stories.