Family Puzzle Solving

I got to spend some time with my friend's six-year-old son while he was off school for holiday break.  His hobbies include sports, sports, sports, and puzzles.  The family does a lot of difficult puzzles together, so we were able to finish this 500 piece one in a single morning.  We're teaching him problem solving and dealing with difficulty.  When he gets tired, we walk away for a bit, and come back to the puzzle later.  But it's a great way to keep older minds sharp too! 

I've started searching out new puzzles for him.  We scored at Dollar Tree and 99 Cents Only, but I've been watching Craigslist and thrift shops for used as well.  I found eleven puzzles for about thirty bucks at one thrift store, most thousand piece ones, so we're now set for a while.

Taking the used puzzles home, I cleaned up the thrift shop grime on the boxes with a paper towel and a bit of windex, then made sure the pieces from each open box were in a ziploc bag, so they didn't go flying out before we were ready to use them.  My final touch was to add a sticker to the back of the box -- do you remember bookplates?  When you'd leave a book at an airport or doctor's office, but put a sticker in the front of the book so each reader could leave their name and hometown.  It lead to a great trail of traffic as the book made its' way around the world.  I added a record to the back of each box so that as the puzzles were used and passed on we could see how far they have traveled.  I hope to see names, ages, and cities listed on other used puzzles I pick up.  Besides passing the puzzles along to my little one's friends, I'm considering donating them to senior facilities as well.