5 Magna Tiles Ideas to Encourage Creative Building and Problem Solving

Magna Tiles come in various shapes and sizes. One easy way to encourage problem-solving and shape recognition with younger kids is to use tape to create random shapes on your table or refrigerator. Let your little ones choose shapes to fill the inside of the tape.

Older kids may need more of a challenge than creating shapes out of Magna Tiles. Give them a ping-pong ball and lay many Magna Tiles out in rows on the kitchen table, then encourage them to place additional Magna Tiles as walls and create a maze for the ball. If you have multiple children in this age range, have one create the maze and see if the other can solve it.

Kids of all ages enjoy using Magna Tiles to build castles. You can easily tailor this activity to suit certain ages, and it's a great way to keep kids occupied while you get dinner started or put a load of laundry in the wash.

For little ones, have them build simple 2D castles. They can later tell you about the castle they built, including who they imagine lives there and where it is located. Older kids are up for a bigger challenge and can create 3D castles with various levels and rooms. You can add to the challenge by giving them a checklist of elements and seeing if they can find a creative way to build a castle that meets all of your criteria.

Every kid has a favorite animal, and you have the opportunity to bring nature to life with Magna Tiles. Have your little ones choose an animal and let them figure out how to build it out of Magna Tiles.

Younger children may do better with 2D shapes, so let them use Magna Tiles on the refrigerator or a metal sheet pan. For older kids, you can work together to build a 3D structure of their favorite animal.

If your kids love playing with animal figurines, have them build a barn to house all of the animals. Stack two Magna Tiles to create the outer walls, then use single squares to create stalls and stall doors. For older kids, you can add another challenge by asking them to make a roof on top of the barn.