Geography Puzzles: Best Way to Learn Countries and Continents

There is so much to study when it comes to geographical locations. You need to know where the countries are, what countries they border, bodies of water and so much more, it can just be overwhelming. In the past, I have suggested getting out an atlas or getting a world map for people who know they are going on Jeopardy! to at least get the layout of the world. But my outlook on that has all changed now.

I am now recommending A Broader View Continent Combo Pack of puzzles of 5 world continents: North America, South American, Europe, Asia and Africa. For learning where the countries of the world are located, these puzzles beat reading an atlas hands down, in my view. There are 5 separate puzzles in 12″ x 15.25″ frames and a total of 171 pieces, distributed as follows:

North America – 55 pieces, Europe – 38 pieces, Africa – 37 pieces, Asia – 26 pieces and South America – 15 pieces

Geography puzzles are available on Amazon, at Walmart and various other sites online. Depending on what you want to buy, they can cost in the range of $15 to $30, not including tax & shipping, if applicable.

Not every country is shown on some of the maps: they don’t show the Lesser Antilles in the North America puzzle. It’s not a map of the USA so there’s no Hawaii. They don’t have the island nations of Cabo Verde, Seychelles and Mauritius on Africa’s puzzle. They show Cyprus on Asia’s puzzle, although not as a puzzle piece. A lot of the puzzle pieces are in the shape of the country, but not all. The larger countries are broken up and smaller ones are combined on one puzzle piece. Some of the pieces are bodies of water.

For purposes of becoming familiar with the locations of most countries, learning the bordering countries and/or bodies of water, as well as seeing which are landlocked, all that doesn’t matter much. It’s easy enough to augment one’s knowledge with more detailed maps once you’ve got the basics down. These puzzles are a great hands-on tool for kids learning geography in school as well as for those who want to bone up on country locations before an appearance on Jeopardy!

My plan when I got my puzzles was to have a contest to see who could put all 5 puzzles together the fastest but that turned out to be impractical since we only have one set. Instead, here is what I did: I dumped all 171 puzzle pieces on the table and mixed them all up. Here’s what that looks like:

The temptation is to start with South America, only 15 pieces and that would be done. But I started with Asia, figuring that would be the most difficult for me. You don’t have to finish the one in front of you first anyway. You just have to finish them all in the least amount of time.

There I was throwing the countries on the frame they belonged to as I picked them up, putting the largest pieces in place right away. I had puzzle pieces falling on the floor, sticking to my arm and what not. I thought this was only go to take me 30 minutes and, at one point, I wanted to quit and call it a bad idea. But I persevered and finished them all in 42 minutes. No cheating, the countries and water pieces were all where they belonged and the puzzles were perfectly flat.

Then I issued my challenge: $10 to anyone who could beat my time on their first try. Presumably, if anyone can beat me, the crown would pass to that person and that would be the new time to beat and they would have to pay anyone who beat them. But it doesn’t look like that is what is going to happen. 😀 I got one taker who is going to give it a try solo and I ended up offering my daughter and her hubby a handicap: they can do the puzzles together and see if the two of them can put all 5 together faster than I did.