Puzzle making with digital imagery

One thing that Iwas taught to aid in pre-writing and pre-writing is the reognition of letters. In one of my courses, they concentrated on the form, shape and curves that all the letters make. They explained how puzzles can really help with this as it forces students to really look at the shape and contour of the puzzle pieces in order to put them together. I had a few puzzles in my classroom, but not many so rather than go out and buy some I created puzzles with them. At the beginning of the year I would take photos of the students in my class and then print them and glue them onto a cardboard. I would then cut them into different pieces (5 piece puzzles to start) and they would have to put them together. They loved it and it worked the recognition of curves and shapes for, eventually, letters and they got to work on getting to know one another and putting names to the faces of their classmates.