Montessori Sunday: Puzzle Maps

Children love puzzles. So why do we insist on giving them puzzles of cartoon shaped animals and people? In a Montessori environment there are still puzzles, but they are more realistic than what you find in most toy stores. Many classrooms have puzzles of plants or animals where each distinct part of the animal (ex. the hind legs of a horse) is a separate piece. The geography puzzle maps follow the same concept, each different continent or country is its own piece of the puzzle.

The puzzle maps are introduced after the child has been shown the globe of the world, and introduced to the idea that the world is round and made up of land and water. The globe and world map are both brought to a working mat and together the teacher and child explore how they are similar and different. The teacher then demonstrates with clay how a round sphere can be flattened into the two circles that make up the puzzle. After demonstrating how to lift the pieces carefully using the knobs the child is encouraged to practice the puzzle on their own.

After mastering the world puzzle the child is introduced to the continent puzzles, which are more complicated due to the larger number of pieces. Additionally the child will be introduced to a puzzle map of their own country, which is divided into either states or regions. There are large, laminated control maps for the children to fit the pieces onto if they accidentally take out too many. These maps may be labeled with the names of the country/state or left blank.

Puzzle maps help children with their fine motor skills, spatial reasoning and introduce them in a concrete way to the world around them. In Montessori we work from the whole concept (the world) to the parts (the child's own country/state). This is to help them learn things within a context. It's hard to really understand what a continent is if you don't know that the world is made up of land and water. The children are introduced to the idea of geography though a material that they can see and manipulate. Other activities also branch off from the puzzles. Montessori classrooms have flags of different countries for children to learn about. Cultural folders share with them pictures from different parts of the globe.

Cool fact about the puzzle maps: the knob for each country is strategically placed where the capital of that country is located. How neat is that!