Using visual brainteasers in the classroom encourages critical thinking in your students, and let’s face it: Kids love this kind of game-based learning! We have searched the internet for some simple, yet effective, visual brainteasers that will encourage logical thinking and help your students develop those all-important problem-solving skills. Teachers may get some enjoyment out of trying to work out some of these brainteasers too…
Put one up toward the end of class as a fast finisher activity. The discussions you have around how the students worked out the brainteasers are crucial.
The answers to these brainteasers can all be found at the end of this post, so we won’t give them away until you’ve had a chance to do a little mental workout and improve your own lateral thinking before you try them out with your students.
1. What comes next?
Let’s start off with a brainteaser for pattern recognition. Can your students work out which patterned block goes in the fourth spot?
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/
2. How many blocks in this tower?
A brainteaser to test students’ spatial visualization and their ability to study 3-D figures. Can your students work out how many blocks are in this 3-D tower?
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/
3. Can you work out the net?
This brainteaser is great to test spatial visualization. Students have to mentally put together the 3-D cube to work out the correct net.
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/
4. How many triangles?
In this visual brainteaser, students need to work out how many triangles there are in the image.
http://dailybrainteaser.blogspot.com.au/
5. How many squares?
Similar to the visual brainteaser above, however students need to work out how many squares they can see.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
6. Move one glass only…
In this visual brainteaser, students can see three glasses on the left that are full and three on the right that are empty. If they make one small change, they can make a row of alternately full and empty glasses, but they only do one change! What do they have to do?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
7. Make 10
The matchstick test is a great problem-solving brainteaser. Students need to remove six matches to make 10. Which ones do they move?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
8. Top view
In this non-verbal brainteaser, students must work out which is the top view. You may like to time them to see who can work out this one the quickest…
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/
9. What parking spot?
This visual brainteaser was spotted on a Hong Kong first-grade student admissions test, and it’s a great puzzle to encourage children to think laterally. Can you work it out? Apparently, children around the age of 6 are much more likely to solve this problem than older students and even adults.
puzzlersworld.com
10. What is our weight?
This is a great mathematical problem solving activity for students to work out the weight of a dog, cat, and bunny in the fourth image.
www.funwithpuzzles.com
Finished?
Finished these ten visual brainteasers with your class? No worries – check out some of our printable brainteaser resources that can be sent home with your students for some game-based learning at home or worked on right in the classroom:
Or save some paper, and give these virtual brainteasers a try! Perfect for indoor recess or a pre-break activity, these puzzles are all built on Google Slides so kids can work on them right at the computer. You can even share with remote students! And don’t forget the 20 brainteaser task cards that get your students moving and thinking, using common classroom supplies such as crayons to solve problems.
Answers
- Opposite squares are exchanged in this problem, so the answer is A.
- There are 9 blocks.
- B and C can be immediately rejected visually. D will create a mirror image of the given cube. So the correct answer is A.
- There are 44 triangles.
- There are 40 squares.
- Pour the second glass from the left into the empty glass second from the right.
- You can make the word ‘ten’ by removing the bottom matchstick and two side matchsticks from the first letter. The far-right matchstick on the second letter and the top and bottom matchstick on the third letter.
- The answer is C.
- Turn the picture upside down. You will then see the following number sequence: 86, ?, 88, 89, 90, 91. So the answer is 87.
- Math calculations will give the weight of the dog as 17 kg. Therefore, the weight of the cat and the rabbit is 10 kg, so the answer is 27 kg.
Love these brain teasers? You’ll need to give 20 brain teasers a try!
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