Human Heart Floor Puzzle for kids from Dr. Livingston puts it together

Kids love to have fun. Kids learn in different ways. Everyone knows the first statement, but not enough people acknowledge, pivot, or have the ability to pivot when the learning process might need a different mode of entry. The human body is a naturally curious topic for upper elementary and middle school students. However, there aren’t exactly internal organs that those ages have access to for ‘hands-on’ learning and books can only go so far in motivating them. Genius Games Junior has the Doctor Livingston Jr. line of puzzles that introduces the rabbit hole of our human body that fit like a glove for fifth grade and up.

There are some fourth-grade students who’ll be able to do the puzzles, but they’ll be the exception. The images on the Human Brain and the Human Heart aren’t real obviously, but they also are not too cartoonish. Those younger audiences still might get a little freaked out by the size of the puzzles, and that’s a pity.

For us, it’s just life, granted we’re looking at the things that most people will never see, or aspects of what happens to our bodies after we die. In the puzzle, you’ll see the cross-section of the heart, the tan to the dark brown of the human skull, and the upper row of our exposed teeth for example.

We explained the birds and the bees to our kids when they were in early elementary school using medical definitions. When you treat kids with intelligence and directly approach the things that they laugh at, or freak out over by using scientific or medical terms it takes away the forbidden factor that many of them are attracted to. All too often, that attraction does not equate to education or actively learning about the topic. I’m getting off of my education soap box now.

The bottom line is that these puzzles are fun. Our fifth grader is not a fan of studious things, but he is a fan of puzzles and asking questions. When we go to the doctor he is from entry to exit asking the nurses and doctors questions about posters on the walls and things in the offices. If you’ve ever taken a kid to the doctor they’ve got the same posters of nervous or skeletal systems in certain rooms.

These puzzles are cut from the same vein. The puzzle pieces are big enough to provide the illusion that it’s simple for those ages. However, once they put the pieces out they’ll quickly see that it’s a different story. Human Brain Floor Kids Puzzle and Human Heart Floor Kids Puzzle have puzzle edges that are not traditional. It’s in the shape of different body organs, the human heart or the entire human body. Because they’re in real shape, they do not have hard angles and nary a straight line or 90-degree corner on any of the puzzle pieces. The puzzles are illustrated by Mesa Schumacher, who is a Certified Medical Illustrator.

This makes the puzzles something that fifth-graders will be able to accomplish, but will be challenging the first couple of times. Our 11-year-old could do it the first time, but it took him about 30 minutes. The second time he tried a different puzzle and was able to do it in about 20 minutes. The concept and vision of moving the puzzle pieces around more and grouping them according to colors is something that kids will need to do.

We helped our young puzzle master by looking at the anatomy guide that comes with each puzzle. I would suggest to him that he look for the left ventricle. Then I would tell him to look for the dark red puzzle pieces. Then when he had all of the dark red pieces together I’d tell him that this particular area makes up the left ventricle. The guide shows how the puzzle looks once it’s completed, as well as the major components and what they do.

This is education. This is a puzzle. This is fun. Those three things don’t have to exist separately. If you had these puzzles in a classroom then a group of three students would be able to complete one of them in about ten minutes. The groups could quiz each other about how this or that worked, take the puzzle apart, and pass it on to the next one. It’s interactive fun that provides an alternate way for kids to learn about an area of study that too many might be intimidated by. It’s also worth noting that there are advanced versions of these puzzles that have 500 pieces. We’ve done those versions too, but these kid’s versions have the interactive guides and are the ones that you want if your audience is younger.

Human Heart Floor Kids Puzzle and Human Brain Floor Kids Puzzle, Dr. Livingston’s Unique Shaped 100 Piece Science Puzzle for Kids are from Genius Games.

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