I continued to use the Imaginary Island Puzzle in my classrooms, and even made it available on a small scale to other schools. I progressed through several versions, each time making small improvements to the quality and design. Students helped me develop new pieces to make the puzzle more versatile, and I improved the texture and look of the pieces. I was admonished often to produce the puzzle publicly, before someone appropriated my idea, but I knew there was still a lot of work to do. So I continued to observe, process, modify, and then observe some more.
Good work takes time.
It often takes a long time to notice that we are noticing something and then even longer to act on it. At last the puzzle seemed ready. We talked with developers from a major Montessori materials company and with several puzzle-making companies, but ultimately we decided to maintain control over production to achieve the highest quality product. We knew we wanted something well above the grade of traditional jigsaw puzzle material - something wonderful to handle, especially pleasing to look at, something we could be truly proud to have in other classrooms. It took a full year to produce the puzzle - partly because we were new to such a large venture, but in great part because this was not a typical puzzle.