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!

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Summer Reading Printables and Tips for Parents

As I write this, back to school time is right around the corner, and if you have kids going to school for the first time or who might need a refresher on what school is like, books can be a big help in calming fears and letting them know what to expect.

School Days by Fabiola Sepulvelda is a wordless picture book full of photographs of various things that happen during the school day, such as leaving home, getting off the bus, greeting your teacher, raising your hand to talk, circle time, reading, quiet work, lunch, recess, art and music, and greeting your parent at the end of the day.

This is a nice book to prompt conversations about the way things might look and things that might happen at school, and could also be used in the classroom to talk about routines and what happens each day. It’s meant to be for kids who don’t yet know how to read, but could be used with older kids as well.

Ready for School by Dona Herweck Rice and illustrated by Amanda Morrow follows a little girl through a day getting ready for school and thinking about all the things that happen at school. It covers things like calendar time, mat time, being read to, math (they’re learning to count to five), recess and art. She’s so excited to go she wakes her mom up and it’s still nighttime.

This one is good for kids who like reminders of how the routine goes (both getting ready for school and being there) and those who might be apprehensive about what’s going to happen or if it will be fun.

The same author has a series of books that are meant to be for ESL learners but would work for others as well. Welcome to School has photos and single words or short phrases for things you do to get ready for school, different ways you might travel there, greetings, morning meeting activities. people you might see at school (like teacher, student, custodian), places and objects you’ll find around school, things at recess and school rules (like line up and raise hand).

Your School Day uses longer phrases (“riding in car” instead of just “car,” for example) and older children in the photos. The routine is also for older kids and uses bigger words like announcements and equipment. It also shows photos of different subjects kids might study, different kinds of learning groups and more people and places you’ll find in school.

A Day at School is kind of in between these two, with older elementary students going through many of the same things. This one doesn’t mention morning meetings but also doesn’t use the level of vocabulary of the book for older kids. Either this one of Welcome to School would be fine to use with young kids who already speak English but might like to see all the things and people they’ll see at school.

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