Learning Geography is Fun with Globe Puzzleball – A Timberdoodle Review

We love studying geography in our homeschool. Do you include it in yours? We like to look at maps and refer to them when we are reading about a place in history or literature. We study geography as a part of our normal curriculum, drawing maps and talking about locations. When we read our Bible, we always look at a map and find the places discussed. Geography is integral in our homeschool. (You can read more about how we do geography here.)

So, when we were given the opportunity to check out New Ravensburger XXL Children’s Globe 180-Piece Puzzleball we thought that would be great. Quite frankly, a globe for use in our homeschool was on my wish list so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give this a try. I’ll admit, I was a little skeptical as to whether it would be usable after it was made but I have been pleasantly surprised by its functionality.

The New Ravensburger XXL Children’s Globe Puzzleball is an 180-piece puzzle by Ravensburger. It is a 3-D puzzle, meaning that it is an actual globe after you have put the puzzle together. The puzzle pieces are coated in plastic and shaped to make the puzzle a 3-D round shape after assembly.

The pieces are numbers on the back with an arrow indicating which was to place the puzzle piece. This was EXTREMELY helpful in assembly. My daughter, who is 12, was a little worried about the assembly when she first spilled out the Globe Puzzleball pieces onto the table. But once she saw the numbers, she was very pleased and got started right away.

She assembled the puzzle, with little to no help from anyone, in record time. It really took about 30 minutes from start to finish. She really enjoyed it. She said that she loved that it was 3-D and fun to put together. The Globe Puzzleball comes with a plastic stand so you can display the functional globe after assembly. I did have to help her with putting the final piece into close around the plastic rod that runs into the bottom of the globe and out the top to hold it together and be placed on the stand to spin. This piece is all plastic but holds up well. She was worried that snapping the final piece around the globe would break up the Globe Puzzleball so she asked me to help (probably so if it broke it would be my fault, right? 🙂 LOL)

But it went together great and VIOLA! we have a working globe for our home.

The globe is accurate, easy to read, and spins nicely on the plastic axis on the stand. The stand is a LITTLE flimsy in that you want to make sure you are careful spinning it but for the price and the fact that it’s a puzzle, it’s a great globe.

My daughter let my 7-year-old help her put some of the puzzle together and he thought it was great fun, even though he isn’t a huge puzzle guy. He really loves the globe now that it’s put together and said he thought it was really cool that we made our own globe.