Puzzles for Teachers

Browse an extensive collection of printable puzzles, brain teasers, mazes, crosswords, digital activities and a whole lot more to challenge your elementary students in fresh and fun ways!

This teaching resource collection is teacher-created, with curriculum-aligned and editable resources available for both lesson planning and adding to your fast finisher activity box or sub binder!

Curious about using puzzles in your classroom or looking for fresh ideas? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!

Types of Puzzles

There's a whole host of puzzles out there you can use to get your students more engaged in learning, develop problem-solving skills, and reinforce the concepts you're teaching! Here are a few favorites from our teacher team (and you'll find printable versions of many of these in this collection)!

1. Picture puzzles — Picture puzzles are a great teaching tool that require kids to use visual perception and problem-solving skills to identify patterns or differences in a set of pictures.
2. Crossword puzzles — Often used by adults, these puzzles are kid-friendly too! They offer up written clues and require students to fill in a grid with words that intersect with each other.
3. Tangram puzzles — These challenging puzzles for kids involve using a set of geometric shapes to create a larger picture or design.
4. Logic puzzles — This learning tool requires kids to use reasoning and deduction to solve a problem. They usually involve a set of clues that need to be used to figure out the solution.
5. Word searches — In this type of puzzle, a grid of letters is given with a list of words to find hidden within it. Students are challenged to go on the hunt for the word, often reading up, down, diagonally, and sometimes even backward!
6. Spot the difference — A popular feature in kids' magazines, these require our students to find the differences between two nearly identical pictures.
7. Sequence puzzles — Sequence puzzles involve arranging a series of objects or symbols in a particular order, based on a set of rules or patterns. For example, students may practice skip counting as they place puzzle pieces in order based on the numbers displayed on each piece.
8. Maze puzzles — Yes, mazes count as puzzles! They challenge kids to find their way through a maze to reach a goal or endpoint.
9. Matching games — This is another type of puzzle you may not think of as a puzzle per se, but it is! Matching games involve finding pairs of matching items, such as shapes, colors, or numbers, in a set of cards or objects.
10. Tarsia puzzles — Similar to jigsaw puzzles, tarsia puzzles are made up of irregularly shaped pieces that fit together in a specific way to form a larger picture or pattern. This type of puzzle has a twist, however! In a Tarsia puzzle, each piece contains a problem or question related to a particular topic or subject area. The students must match the pieces together by finding the correct answer or solution to each problem or question. Once all the pieces have been matched, they form a larger picture or pattern that provides a visual representation of the topic or concept being studied.

How Do You Use Puzzles in the Classroom?

Whether you're using mazes to teach math or crossword puzzles in your reading centers, this is a versatile learning tool! Here are a few of the times they can come in handy:

• Introducing new concepts
• Reviewing concepts students have learned
• Reinforcing problem-solving skills
• Collaborative learning
• Learning through play
• Differentiated instruction