It's raining outside so Little Ted is spending the afternoon doing jigsaws. But some are too easy and some are too hard, can his Daddy help?
It was raining so Little Ted was staying indoors doing a jigsaw. The jigsaw was of a picture of farmyard animals and one he had done before.
“I’m bored of this jigsaw” Little Ted said “it’s too easy.”
“Why don’t you try one with more pieces” replied his Daddy “I’m sure there’s some in the cupboard.”
Little Ted went and investigated. There were plenty of jigsaws in the cupboard because his Mummy got one every Christmas from Granny, but they all had lots and lots of pieces and looked really difficult.
“They’ve all got too many pieces” Little Ted complained.
“We could make our own” suggested his Daddy. “I’ve got a magazine with some big pictures in it. I’ll glue one onto a piece of card, then we can cut it into pieces and you can try to recreate the picture. The pieces won’t lock together but it will be good practice.”
His Daddy found the biggest picture he could of a racing car on a race track, and stuck it to the card.
Then he showed it to Little Ted, so he knew what the picture should look like. On the other side he drew some wavy lines and divided the card into big and small pieces then cut along the lines until all that was left was a big pile of pieces.
“Off you go Little Ted. See if you can put the picture back together.”
Little Ted sat at the table with his tongue sticking out as he concentrated and made the picture again quite quickly.
“Finished! That was easy” Little Ted said.
“That was quick” replied his Daddy “I’ll need to make the next one a bit harder” and he repeated the process of gluing a picture to a piece of card, only this time he cut it into twice as many pieces.
“Ha ha, try solving that one.”
Little Ted really had to concentrate because there were so many bits but finally he sort of had it looking like the original picture, although one of the sides was longer than the other and there were some pieces left over.
“This jigsaw is rubbish” Little Ted said “its too hard.”
“Too easy, too hard, sometimes you’re difficult to please” replied his Daddy, slightly hurt that his hard work creating the jigsaws hadn’t been appreciated. “Anyway its almost time for dinner, so tidy everything away. You can put the puzzles under B for bucket!”
A few days later a parcel came in the post addressed to Little Ted. His Daddy handed it to him when he came back from nursery.
“Look there’s a parcel come for you today Little Ted. I wonder what it could be?”
Little Ted took the parcel excitedly. It wasn’t his birthday and he didn’t usually get presents, particularly ones that came through the post.
“Can I open it now?” Little Ted said as he gave the package a shake.
“Of course. Does it make a noise?”
The parcel was a rectangle shape and Little Ted could hear something inside but he couldn’t figure out what the noise was. It was covered in brown paper held down with sticky tape, so Little Ted went and got his scissors and carefully cut the tape and opened the package.
Inside was a box with a picture of Little Ted holding an ice cream on it.
“What is it” Little Ted asked.
“Why don’t you open up the box.”
Little Ted lifted off the lid and inside was a new jigsaw puzzle but this one was made from a photograph of Little Ted.
“Thank you!” Little Ted said “This is a really great jigsaw.” And he tipped it onto the table and started to build it.
The End