Teaching your children concepts related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is a great idea because you can equip them with important skills that will pay off later. However, many educational STEM toys rely on screens, which may not be right for your children. Magna tiles offer another way to teach your child valuable technical concepts without increasing screen time.
What Are Magna Tiles?
Magnetic tiles are construction toys that rely on magnetic pull to link together. Tiles are shaped into squares, triangles and other forms that can be arranged into different structures. It’s easy for a child to build a tower or little house without worrying about it falling over like traditional building blocks. Your child can also change the structure quickly and build something new, giving them hours of play.
Magna tiles are fun but they also help your child grow. These toys are recommended for children as young as three, so they can help toddlers work on their fine motor skills. Little hands will learn to grasp and manipulate the tiles, giving them practice for more challenging tasks in the future such as writing.
Children also get a chance to expand their minds with magna tiles. As your little one creates their pattern of tiles, they build their spatial reasoning, their pattern recognition and learn how to work with 3D objects to get the results they want.
This toy works well for groups of kids as well. With a big pile of tiles and a few friends, your child can learn how to work with others to build a collaborative structure or matching creations. The teamwork and shared creativity can improve your child’s social and communication skills.
What To Do With Magna Tiles?
Getting started playing with magna tiles is easy. Some sets have a theme such as safari animals or dinosaurs. You can work within that theme, or expand your options by mixing and matching sets and tiles and coming up with your own ways to play:
- Science Savvy: Dive deep into the STEM world and use magna tiles to set up simple experiments for your child. Use the magnetism of the tiles to show how magnetic forces work. If you have translucent tiles, use a flashlight to show how light moves through materials and examine the different colors that result.
- Marble Run Mayhem: Let your child get creative and design a maze with their tiles. Help them build twists, turns and ramps, then drop a marble in and see if it can roll to the end. Allow your child to redesign the maze as needed. They’ll learn how angles and momentum work.
- Fortress Frenzy: Help your future engineer get started building a magna tile fortress. Get a large amount of tiles and let them create a hideout that is all theirs. Show them how to make the structure strong and allow them to host fun adventures in their new space.
Get Hands-on STEM Learning With Magna Tiles
When you want to take science education off the screen and bring it into the real world, invest in magna tiles. Your children can have fun while learning how to build and problem-solve. Add some to your toy room today.
