DIY Jigsaw Puzzles and Sequence Cards from Recycled Old Calendar Photographs

I'm in a decluttering frenzy, which usually just yields more clutter because I'm me. Towit...

I saw this project somewhere on the Internet a while back but I can't remember where or I would link. Basically, when this year's calendar expires, you can cut it up to make a homemade jigsaw puzzle.

If you want to to a traditional-looking jigsaw puzzle, draw the cut lines on the back side first.

This is what the cut puzzle looks like reassembled.

For little kids, simply re-assembling a picture from strips is complicated enough. The image on the right will be easier to "solve" than the image on the left because the cuts are perpendicular to the horizon in the images, so there are more things the kiddo can key into to match up.

This photograph seemed to have the cut lines built into the picture in stem and veins of the leaf.

A couple of the images had a strong center of visual interest so I just kept that intact and put the "puzzle" around that.

I used largely monochromatic images as an opportunity to practice counting and  lower-case letters. (Just to be clear, there's no way my kid is doing these anytime soon. He doesn't know numbers or letters in order, he doesn't have the fine motor control to place little pieces in order like this, and he'd almost certainly just just dip the pieces in his milk, but what the heck, I'm trying to think ahead.)

I seriously can barely do this puzzle myself. Hee.

You could also make your own puzzles and sequence cards from any old book or magazine that you liked, but this calendar had nice stiff cardstock pages, which will make it a little easier for the kiddo to grapple with. For now I'm storing the pieces in plastic sandwich bags. (Notice the complete failure to declutter!) We'll see how long they last.