I have always wanted to play with Magna-Tiles especially when I have read about them in blog posts or heard parents talking about them. I decided to buy a set and had my nephew help me check them out. He of course was excited (and he’s almost 9) because he had played with them before. He even tried to convince me to give them to him! At first we just tried out building structures and seeing what we could come up with.
Then he went into the closet where his toys are and came out with this other cool toy that I had never seen before. It was SmartMax Set. It had two sized pillars and a bunch of balls. All of which were magnetic. We combined it with our Magna-Tiles to create a really cool structure. I will admit it collapsed on us quite a few times until we figure out exactly where the magnetic attraction would be greatest to combine the two toys.
And then, of course we had to add figurines because this became a fortress with a force field and in the Magna-Tile box were prisoners who we were trying to free. What you can’t see off to the right became pyramids which is where the controls were kept so that could deactivate the force field and rescue the prisoners. As you can see we had a guard inside the force field as well.
I love engaging in play with my nephew because I am amazed by his imagination every time. I also loved playing with these toys because we got to practice problem solving (when they kept crashing on us), fine motor skills for building, bilateral coordination using helper hands (because otherwise its awful hard to maintain this structure while connecting the pieces).
What magnetic toys do you like?