Do you teach your grandkids to solve puzzles?

My 11 years old enjoys puzzles like mazes and sudoku. She's also starting to love crosswords. We both solve each clue given and its fun. She's learning a lot from me. We also do crosswords online, she discovers freedailycrosswords.com. It's totally free and it has my favorite puzzles from USA Today.

Gosh how wonderful that such people are up so early and able even to provide a website to help us.

My five year old GS loves mazes and dot to dot.

My grandson loves puzzles and from a young age would do jigsaws against the clock, then he discovered the Brain Games on the Wii. I don't know about teaching him - he just wanted me to join in so he could compete and has gone from there.

Oh it's not Spam Thursday is it?

My thoughts Dragonfly

Not spam, but very American clues such as "the stereotypical soccermom vehicle". I've no chance with that!

0300 BST in the US is not necessarily early. Depends which time zone it's in over there.

The latest leaflet for children in Pizza Express has a wordsearch and a maze . My grandson loves jigsaw puzzles and these paper puzzles seemed to be a natural progression

Both of my children loved puzzles and both of my granddaughters too. A maize maze has opened on the Island they love that too! I've suggested they visit the huge one in York if they want to give their brains and memory a good workout.

My son also had a penchant for taking things apart to see if he could figure out how to put them back together again

Yes I'm up early i have a disabled son to take care of!

I apologise, Marg, on behalf of some rude gransnetters on here. You are not the only one who occasionally gets rude comments, so do not worry. I wasn't aware that new members from America were not welcome.

My grandson in the Falklands asked for junior scrabble for his 6th birthday. (He loves all sorts of games and puzzles.) I can't wait to visit him soon and play it with him. I've just received a photo of him playing patience (with cards, not computer).

Back off Jen I'll do my own apologising if I've read this wrong.

Yes there are rude GNetters Marg who take any opportunity to make digs at others as you can see. But I offer you an unreserved apology .. I thought you were ones of the spammers we get on a regular basis.

Sorry, Aka, thought you hadn't noticed.

Accepted.

Hey, what did I miss? I've been gone for a while, but now I'm back. I'm glad that "gransnetters" (as you've said durhamjen) responded to my forum post. My apology to MargStone, if they thought that you were a spammer because of the topic that I've posted. This topic just popped into my mind and I wanted to share it with you guys.

Steve, you might like to check out Lumosity brain games. Perhaps you already have done

And not just paper puzzles either. My 4-year old GD was playing with a helium balloon left over from a party. She tied a toy car to the string and of course it pulled the balloon down to the floor, then she tied a feather to it and it floated up to the ceiling.

The next half hour I watched as she tied various objects to it until in the end a piece of dried pasta helped her succeed in her objective and the balloon hovered neither up nor down.

'Look Nana, I've done it!'

My DD in OZ (3 GC's, 2 boys (10, 4) and girl (8) is really very strict when it comes to screen time so instead games are the order of the day. I spent 10 months with her when no.3 was born and started teaching the children to play cards, starting with pairs. Very soon both older children could beat me and their Mum and Dad. We've progressed to cheat, rummy and other card games such as UNO which they play with their older cousins (12 and 15).
Last year on family holiday altogether in Thailand I taught oldest GS basic cribbage and earlier this year the GD. I understand that they both have now got to grips with the game and are quite proficient. They play plenty of other board games with both the adults and family in their lives, plus jigsaws etc.
They really enjoy playing family games and its so satisfying all playing together. In Thailand we all played ball in the pool from the then 3 year old to me and the older adults. It's such fun to all do something together and strengthens the bond between us all. I just feel so lucky to have the opportunity to enjoy being with them all.
I'll certainly try them out with scrabble next time I see them, plus anything else we can come up with.