Extreme Dot to Dot: Pets

Extreme Dot to Dot: Pets

Forget preschool dot-to-dots. Extreme Dot to Dot: Pets challenges your child to connect hundreds—and sometimes more than 1,400—numbered dots to uncover detailed, realistic animal portraits.

The book includes 32 pet-themed puzzles featuring animals such as rabbits, cockatiels, goldfish, and hermit crabs. Some of the largest puzzles stretch across two facing pages, so there’s no guessing the picture after connecting numbers 1 through 27. Your child may be hundreds of dots in before his pet finally begins to emerge.

Finding and connecting all those numbers provides serious practice in number sequencing, visual scanning, mapping, fine motor control, and concentration. It also requires patience. A complex picture may take more than one sitting to finish, making this a better fit for a child who enjoys methodical challenges than one who wants a quick payoff.

Once a puzzle is complete, your child can color the finished picture, turning all that careful line work into artwork of his own. It makes Extreme Dot to Dot an especially handy screen-free activity for quiet afternoons, travel, or those times when you need one child happily occupied while you work with another.

One parent heads-up: the numbers and dots are small and lightly printed, and children have found them difficult to see at times. Your child will also need to be comfortable recognizing and sequencing numbers well into the hundreds and thousands. Those features are part of what makes these puzzles challenging, but they also mean this isn't simply a harder version of an early-elementary dot-to-dot.

With 32 puzzles ranging from roughly 300 to more than 1,400 dots, Extreme Dot to Dot: Pets offers plenty of room for a patient puzzler to stretch his concentration—and the satisfaction of finally discovering what all those dots were hiding.