If you haven’t guessed already, I’m a huge fan of advocating learning through play. I wanted to use this week’s Homemade Monday article to share about how Magformers both inspire and teach children. You can use Magformers for unending imaginative play or to create educational opportunities.
ENDLESS IMAGINATIVE PLAY
Magnetic tiles offer endless imaginative play because the sky is the limits with what you can build and unlike battery operated toys, magnets are ongoing. What I love most about Magformers is that they activate a child’s visual and spatial abilities while engaging in fun. Children are working on STEAM (science, technology, engineer, art and math) without even knowing it. Through building Magformers young minds are learning important engineering concepts such as design, structure, geometry and physics. They can work on mastering a goal by building a specific structure such as a truck, Ferris wheel or animal using the instruction manual that comes with each kit or they can use their imagination to come up with unique creations of their own.
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY HACKS USING MAGFORMERS
Math Blocks- Use Magformers to work on counting, addition and subtraction. You can use them on the floor or on a magnetic surface such as the fridge or magnetic board. Lay out your blocks to count or add magnetic numbers that you can find at your local dollar store to put in the cubs. See image below for an example of how to do this. 
Patterns- Use magnetic tiles to work on teaching patterns and sorting colors.
Spelling- Use the resource you have to make spelling fun. My kindergartner loves working on his site words by building them. In the image below we used magnetic letters and letters from banana grams to work on literacy skills.
Identify Shapes- You can use Magformers to work on geometry. Work on recognition of both flat and 3-D shapes. For an example, squares and cubes and triangles and pyramids. 
MAGFORMERS
I highly recommend investing in Magformers and not a knock-off brand. Magformers are high quality, made to last and take safety seriously. The Magformers tiles are quality constructed and each magnet is sonic welded into place for safe and long-lasting play!
Each building set comes with an idea booklet. as well as access to a plethora of ideas on their website where can download them for free. I’m glad that we invested in a few Magformer sets because they are a staple in our house. My boys love building with them on a daily basis.
NEW SETS THIS SEASON
While at Toy Fair in February we got to see a sneak peek look at a few of the new sets releasing this year. We were really excited about the Amazing Rescue sets. With the Police Car and Fire Truck sets you can click and create your own rescue adventures. These 50-piece sets comes with magnetic pieces, characters and emergency vehicle accessories and much more to keep the city safe. Great for children aged 3 and up.
Amazing Rescue – Fire Fighter Set
***The Playful Parent is 501c3 non-profit that provides families with free support and resources. Homemade Monday articles are written to advocate learning through play. All content and photographs are property of http://www.theplayfulparent.org. Thank you Magformers for sending a sample kit for The Playful Parent to review.***
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