Fun Activities Using Magnetic Tiles

My daughter was obsessed with magnetic tiles when she was younger. We probably had three or four sets and she could make balls and other shapes from the design books from memory. She would use them with animals and other figures to tell stories, but mostly she just had fun building things (and destroying them!) with these fun and colorful tiles.

If you’ve got a kiddo in the phase, or have some of these magnet blocks in your classroom, here are some fun extension activities to get you beyond the book that came in the box.

Making Danish has a great list of simple activities you can do with these blocks, including making repeating patterns, building a maze and using them for color sorting of other objects.

Happy Toddler Playtime’s list of activities to do with magnetic tiles is aimed at preschoolers and has lots of fun ideas like building ramps, making a marble run, making a snakes and ladders style board game and more. Many of these ideas are collected from other websites and the Connetix Tiles Instagram account. (Connetix is one brand of magnetic tiles you might find if you’re shopping for them.)

And then there’s this list of building ideas from Adventure in a Box. This collection includes 2D and 3D designs for everything from letters and numbers to 3D animals, seasonal designs and more. They sell printable cards with these ideas on them that show you how to build them (the set for 2D designs, for example, is linked here) but even just scrolling through the blog post should give you and your kids plenty of ideas for things they want to try to build.

Do you have (or have you had) a kid who was really into magnet tiles? I’d love to hear about their favorite things to make!

My brother went through a phase where he was obsessed with maps. He loved to look at maps and he would draw maps of places real and imagined. He even drew maps that followed our route when we’d go to visit our grandparents in another state!

I assume there are still kids who go through map phases, and kids with an interest in history and how things got to be the way they are. Both kinds of kids will enjoy the book Borders: Understanding the Lines that Unite and Separate Us by Karim Ressouni-Demigneux, with illustrations by Karine Maincent.

The book describes how the original borders were natural, such as oceans, rivers, mountains and deserts, and while some of those borders are still in use today, many borders are human made, decided by treaties or carved out by colonizers. It covers the history of people congregating in one place and how city-states evolved into empires, how maps are drawn and how human conflicts can reshape borders.

There are stories about walls that reinforce borders, how borders work in the air and at sea, how people cross borders with passports or as refugees and how climate change is altering the borders of some countries.

You’ll also learn some fun border facts like the fact that if you stand in the middle of the bridge over the Zambezi River you can be in four countries at once because that’s where the borders of Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe meet. Or how there is only one border crossing between India and Pakistan that’s closed each night in an elaborate ceremony.

The book talks about time zones, border towns and places where countries and parts of countries are inside other countries and places where borders are less important such as the European Union.

While there are serious subjects in the book, it’s still a fun read that’s sure to interest those kids around ages 8-12 who like travel, maps and weird but true facts.

About the book: 72 pages, hardcover, published 2026 by Blue Dot Kids Press. Suggested retail price $21.95.

Have you read?

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