Greetings!

Welcome to the second edition of enhancing my son's recognition, patience, and building skills using 3D puzzles. In the first edition of this series my son built a house 3D puzzle (a house with a chimney) which he handled quite decently in terms of recognizing the pieces, in terms of him being patiently finding the correct parts and attaching them, and in terms of his building which is quite good.

One of the most favorites structures of my son is a windmill. so, when my wife searched for 3D puzzles to buy she included a windmill with a house attached. A windmill is not a common structure in our country. They can only be found in some selected locations in our country particularly Ilocos (where my son first saw windmills when we traveled there back in April of 2019).

Seeing the windmill, my son is so excited about building it, so I obliged to let him build it next.

Building the Windmill House 3D Puzzle

Just like in the previous one, my son relies on his recognition ability by just looking at the shape of the parts of the 3D puzzle that he is going to attach first. He first finds the wall of the house of the windmill then attached it first with care and with less force since he has learned in the previous that exerting too much effort will only damage the puzzle.

Putting up the walls

After he is finished with the wall and the roof of the house of the windmill he immediately starts the building of the body of the windmill. Since he is not all too familiar with the body structure of the windmill I thought him how to build it.

Building up the body of the windmill

After he is finished inputting the body of the windmill together he attempted to attach it to the house which he did with a little bit of struggle since the holes do not quite fit the body of the windmill.

Putting up the body of the windmill

After attaching the body of the windmill I showed him how he can build the windmill itself which he followed quite easily and attached the rotor of the windmill with ease.

Attaching the rotor of the windmill

After he is finished building the windmill he now diverts his attention in attaching the front door of the house.

At this moment, and just like in the first 3D puzzle that he built (on the first edition of this series). He almost relies on his recognition ability in finding the parts that he needs to attack and he is still patient in finding them also some finesse in his building skills has been more apparent and he is more careful not to damage the parts of the 3D puzzle.

Putting up the entrance of the windmill

After attaching the front door part of the 3D puzzle he now attaches the roof of the window of the house of the windmill (which is apparently the last piece of the house).

Putting up a window roof on a side

And voila, he is finished building the Windmill House 3D puzzle a little faster than the previous one.

Here's a thing, my son asked me if the rotor of the windmill will spin when hit by wind.

Enter my inner Engineer self, as technical as it may seem to my son, I attempted to elaborate as to why the rotor will not spin if hit by wind (good thing he asked me to build a paper windmill before for him to play). I told him that the part of the windmill where the rotor is attached is "square" instead of "rounded". Since it is square it will not spin as opposed to the one that I built for him. And the blades of the rotor are "flat" instead of "curve".

He seems to understand my explanation since he clearly sees the difference between the 3D puzzle and the one that I build for him.

Done building the windmill house 3D puzzle

Below is the cardboard windmill I made for him...