Magna-Tiles Robots

We love Robots! Challenge your Children: What do these Magna-Tiles Robots have in common? What makes them different?

Similarities: They all have a cube for a head… or a brain?! Each has two arms and two legs. Two of them (#2 and #3) used Isosceles Triangles for their upper limbs: #2 has square pyramids and #3 simply balances the isosceles triangles pointing forward.

Differences: Only one of them has eyes! Three fourths of them have an additional shape/piece on top (#1, #2, #3 and not #4)… are they sensors? The Clear Colors robots have a vertical line of symmetry! The left and right sides are mirror images of each other. The Magna-Tiles Solid Colors Robot does not because his two upper limbs are different on the left and right side… he is dancing!

Encourage children to be observant and describe their Magna-Tiles Creations. Children will naturally incorporate symmetry in their designs!

Magna-Tiles Colorful Reflection

Sunlight shining through Magna-Tiles Clear Colors creates a colorful reflection!

Magna-Tiles Art

Magna-Tiles Ferris Wheel

Magna-Tects made Ferris Wheels out of Magna-Tiles and placed small items inside! Rectangular Prisms make the base and the Shape of a Hexagon makes the Wheel… nice work! All three Ferris Wheels are the same height and display vertical symmetry.

Have you ever ridden a ferris wheel?! The creator of the Ferris Wheel is engineer George W.G. Ferris Jr.! He was born on Valentine’s Day Feburary 14, 1859. This year, Google celebrated his 154th Birthday by displaying the Google Doodle below!  It shows a scene with two, side-by-side Ferris Wheels in an amusement park.

George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. began his career in the railroad industry and was interested in bridge building. He founded a company, G.W.G. Ferris & Co., to test and inspect metals for railroads and bridge builders. In 1893, he traveled to Chicago, Illinois for the World’s Columbian Exposition. There was a challenge to American Engineers to to conceive a monument for the fair.

The Original 1893 Chicago Ferris Wheel

Ferris wanted to build a structure to outdo the Eiffel Tower, the centerpiece of the Paris Exhibition of 1889. The Exhibition’s Planners were looking for something “original, daring, and unique”.  His wheel was modeled on a bicycle wheel! It had heavy steel beams as spokes to maintain the wheel’s shape and balance and two steel girder pyramids in which the axle was set. Here are more interesting/awesome facts:

• the wheel was 264 feet high
• the supporting towers were 140 feet high
• the axle weighed 46 1/2 tons!
• it cost 50 cents (equal to the Exhibition’s general admission charge) for a 20-minute ride
• it carried an estimated 1 1/2 million visitors at the Exhibition

Ferris’ innovative design, a model of efficiency, allowed it to withstand Chicago’s infamous winds while being able to hold about five times the 1,200 tons that it did carry fully loaded. It was a huge success! Please visit here to learn all about George Ferris (1859-1896) as an Inventor.

Magna-Tiles Tutorial: Ball

Challenge your Children to build this cool 3-D Shape! Pieces Needed are 8 Equilateral Triangles and 6 Small Squares. Look at the flat, 2-D pattern on the left. Can you visualize what it will look like when you lift and connect the pieces together to make a bowl shape? When you put two of them together at their edges, you will have made a Magna-Tiles Soccer Ball!

Magna-Tiles Ball Tutorial:

Watch as a Magna-Tect demonstrates how to construct the Magna-Tiles Soccer Ball while saying directions out loud:

Magna-Tiles Snowflake Structure

Four year-old Magna-Tect’s most recent Magna-Tiles Snowflake Structure!

Top View. Symmetry is pretty!

Side View. We spy a Hexagonal Pyramid! Do you see it?

Top View. Impressive design and Magna-Tiles building!

Compare the Top View and Side View! Notice all of the triangular prisms, balanced Triangles, and beautiful symmetrical design. It looks like the most inner pattern is a Hexagon made of Six Equilateral Triangles. Cool!

Happy Holidays Magna-Tects!

We captioned this Magna-Tiles Creation: A Forest of Green Isosceles Trees! The photo was taken on a magnetic white board. Notice the colorful reflections created by building in front of a window! It is possible to make reflections with natural sunlight, a headlamp, flashlight, or mini LED lights that you may have around your home or classroom.

Click through the slideshow below to explore another Magna-Tiles Tree. It is the Same Shape as the Isosceles Triangle… except it is larger (different Size)! That means that we can describe the two Magna-Tiles Tree as Similar Shapes. Children will explore part-to-whole concepts while building with Magna-Tiles basic geometric shapes.

Challenge your Children to make a Magna-Tiles Tree that is Four Times as big as the “trees” pictured above! That means the two Shapes are Similar. They have the Same Shape, Different Size.

Magna-Tiles Train Tracks

Today’s Magna-Tiles Creation is captioned: coolest train track I’ve ever built

 

Challenge your Children to describe their Magna-Tiles Creations:We see a clockwise spiral shape formed by Magna-Tiles standing vertically!It looks like this Magna-Tiles Creation is made of all small squares.What other shapes can you make by balancing pieces to stand up? A Magna-Tiles Message! Make the shapes of letters of the alphabet to develop language and pre-reading skills.

Magna-Tiles Liberty Tower

Magna-Tiles Tutorial: Cabin Cruiser Boat

8 Year Old Magna-Tect Charlie made a tutorial for how to create a Magna-Tiles Cabin Cruiser Boat. He says that the Pieces Needed are:

11 Small Squares
10 Equilateral Triangles
4 Isosceles Triangles
2 Right Triangles

Charlie shows us what the Cruiser Boat will look like when it is complete and then demonstrates putting it together from start to finish! Challenge your Children to point out the Square Pyramid on the finished creation.

Nice! Magna-Tects practice presentation skills! Challenge your Children to describe their Magna-Tiles Creations and use new words.

Magna-Tiles Hexagonal Pyramid

This Hexagonal Pyramid was built outside on a snow day! See more Hexagonal Pyramids in Magna-Tiles Creations! Play and LEARN!

Magna-Tiles Chalkboard

Write a Magna-Tiles Message! Magna-Tects were writing on the driveway with Magna-Tiles chalk… use your imagination!

Build with Magna-Tiles balancing on their edges to make shapes. In this case, we made the shapes of the letters of the alphabet. What other shapes can you create? View the slideshow below to see how we play and LEARN!

Spell Magna-Tiles by Valtech !

Some letters do not fit the pattern of 4 Magna-Tiles high and 2 Magna-Tiles wide

All of the letters are about the same height

Sometimes the Magna-Tiles “clicked” together so we had to use our hands to position them just right!

The shape of the letter “S” was the most difficult for Magna-Tects to make as there are no straight lines in it

When Magna-Tects adjusted one part of the curve, the other “clicked” back! It took a few times and positioning them just right…

The Magna-Tiles “clicked” back together making a straight line!

When re-arraning the letters, Magna-Tects moved parts of the letter at a time instead of attempting to lift them all at once…

This way, the shape of the letter stayed intact! Magnets are very helpful in picking up when it is time to clean up!

Take a look from a different point of view…

Magna-Tiles from a new perspective!

Let’s play and LEARN together!

2013 Timpani Toy Study

Timpani: Toys that Inspire Mindful Play and Nurture Imagination

Each year, The Center for Early Childhood Education conducts research to look at how children interact with toys in their play. The annual empirical study looks at how young children in natural settings play with a variety of toys and identifies toys that best engage children in intellectual, creative, and social interactions in preschool classrooms.

Magna-Tiles by Valtech were chosen as a Timpani Toy for 2013 along with the toy My First Railway by Brio!! 

The results of this study were announced on December 4, 2013 by Eastern’s Center for Early Childhood Education. From the Press Release:

“Today’s announcement of the highest-scoring toys in the fifth annual TIMPANI Toy Study demonstrates the depth of empirical research that is occurring at our Center for Early Childhood Education,” said Eastern President Elsa Núñex.  “At the same time that Eastern faculty and students are identifying and testing toys that promote the intellectual, social, and creative deployment of children, we are also helping out students prepare for careers as professional early childhod educators.”

“It’s not surprising that Magna-Tiles did well,” said Professor Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, the Phyllis Waite Endowed Chair of Early Childhood Education at Eastern and the study’s principal researcher. “They have been nominated every single year that we’ve conducted this study – teachers and parents recognize their value… they tend to inspire a lot of problem-solving as children figure out how to construct different objects, but we also see a fair amount of pretend play and social interaction.”

Dan’s Daily Destination: Kazoo and Toys!

Dan Daru from Fox 31 visited our friends in Denver, CO at Kazoo and Toys!

Store owner Diana tells us that Magna-Tiles allow children to use their creativity for architecture or engineering in open-ended play. 

Magna-Tect Addie built a house! Dan Daru says that with your imagination, it could be a house, garage, a dog, it can be whatever you want!

Advice from Dan Daru in DENVER — It’s a challenge every parent of young children faces at the holidays. How to find fun toys their kids will like that will engage and teach the children something at the same time. Dan Daru has some tips for you to accomplish all of those goals in his video reports (click the image below to watch the video clip):

Visit your local toy store to play and LEARN! Toy stores are a wonderful part of the community! What do you love about walking through a toy store? They have knowledgeable, expert staff and are full of fun games and toys! Parents, grandparents and children of ages!

Check out the flying helicoptor! Do you think it will land near Addie’s Magna-Tiles creation?

Magna-Tiles + Flashlight

There are many ways to explore light with Magna-Tiles Clear Colors! Use a flashlight to make colorful reflections! Explore angles by pointing the light from different positions to see where it shines! How do the colors of the Magna-Tiles pieces change when there is light on them?