Homemade Puzzle of Saudi Arabia

Assalamu alaikum,

I had this idea to try to make a puzzle but I wasn't sure if it would work. When I first had the idea I thought that it definately would not work but I kept planning how I 'might' be able to make it. When I tried that 'might' plan it was actually do-able alhamdulillah! Here it is insha'Allah:

It's a puzzle of Saudi Arabia!

Close up - in this picture you can't really see the depressions of where the puzzle pieces would go. I couldn't get a really good picture because of the lighting but here you see the puzzle pieces (the arrows point to them).

The puzzle was not actually hard to make alhamdulillah and it only took about an hour to put it together alhamdulillah. It isn't very large (it only measures 22.5 x 17.5 cm /  8.5 x 6.5 inches) and is less than 1 centimeter thick. The hard part was cutting the pieces out correctly. I had to really be careful with the Xacto Knife and I had to use scissors that were really thin so that I could cut around the shapes of the locations in Saudi (i.e. Mecca, Tabuk, etc.) and I have to admit, I accidentally cut Tabuk in half and had to repair it.

What I used to make the puzzle:

- Foam board cut to the dimensions mentioned above

- Printed image of a map of Saudi Arabia

- Scissors and Xacto Knife

- Glue Stick

Would I would like to do insha'Allah, is do a Seerah lesson for Kindergarten and include a bit of social studies/ mapping skills and the children can use this puzzle to reinforce what they learned insha'Allah. Also, I made the puzzle have only 4 pieces because in the Seerah lesson some parts of Saudi Arabia will not be mentioned or covered so I want to the puzzle to reflect and reinforce the lesson insha'Allah. I also put together a small, very simple mini-mapping skills/ social studies book to go along with the lesson.

This is page 2 (before the book is assembled)- a very simple book.

The child will colour the part of the map that is relevant to the sentence on the page insha'Allah.

You can download the book here insha'Allah. The last two pages have two empty text boxes so you can decide what else you may want to teach in your lesson and then you can invite your child(ren) to write a simply sentence about it insha'Allah. You can also find nice information about the Seerah for kids here insha'Allah. This brother has lesson plans and has made printable books that can be used with each lesson - May Allah reward him!

Enjoy insha'Allah!