Jigsaws

The bears can't believe the weather is still dull and rainy. It's supposed to be Summer - and they're supposed to be able to play outside!

They were beginning to get really fed up until Crackers suggested that they invited some of their pals over to do something fun indoors.

When their pals arrived, Boo suggested that they could do a jigsaw. They have several which they haven't done yet, so they found some which looked interesting. The one which Crackers, Alfred, Oscar and Custard chose looked especially hard, as you can see from the pictures here.

For those of you who have never heard of jigsaws, they are pictures you can buy which have been cut into different-shaped pieces, and then you put the pieces back together again to make up the picture. The pieces fit together because some of them have tabs on them, which fit into holes in other pieces. If they fit perfectly, then you know that the pieces belong together. Some jigsaws might have 1,000 pieces! The bears only choose 200-piece or 300-piece ones as otherwise they would have to walk all over the jigsaw to fit their pieces in!

The first job was to decide how many bears per jigsaw because it is very difficult to do them when there are lots of paws all trying to fit pieces in! They decided four or five was the most bears which could do a single jigsaw together. Good job they had loads of jigsaws!

First of all they pulled out all the pieces from the box and spread them out on the table. You really need a very flat surface to work on - if you try and work on a carpet on the floor, for example, then you may find that the pieces don't stick together very well and are very wiggly and make doing a jigsaw very difficult.

Then they found all the pieces that had a straight edge on them and fitted them together - these eventually made up the outside frame of the picture. Then they tried to fit the other pieces within that frame. Sometimes it took ages to find just the right piece, because all of the sides where they meet had to fit together.

It was very helpful to have a photo of the final picture so that they could look at pieces and see if they had specific bits on them that they could recognise, like animal's eyes, or flowers, or even perhaps specific colours.

Once they had spotted a likely piece, and managed to fit it in, then they moved on to the next piece. They each tried to do a particular area of the jigsaw because otherwise it was very difficult to see what they were doing - arms and legs and paws and heads everywhere! This didn't always work though!!

Eventually, with great sighs of satisfaction from each of them, the jigsaws were complete. The other bears came over to look at each finished jigsaw and complimented each other on all their hard work!

If the weather is dull and rainy and you have some spare jigsaws - stay indoors and try to do one (or more!) If you don't have a jigsaw already, then you can even make your own. Find some large photos of scenes you like and cut them into different shaped pieces. You ought to ask the owner of the photos first, of course. Then swap them with your friends and see who can do them the fastest! These might be a little bit harder because you won't have the original picture to check against as you do it. But you will probably be much more pleased when you have finished them. And, if you can't find any photos, then draw some colourful pictures yourselves and do the same with them! Have lots of fun!