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Do your kids own a set of Magnetic Tiles (Magna-Tiles, Picasso Tiles, Stick N Stack)? My kids have been in love with our Magna-Tiles since the day we bought them- and that was over a year ago! With Magna-Tiles, one of the lessons we learned early on was the importance of creating a strong base for the foundation of building. This is especially important with Magna-Tiles because towers tend to easily collapse without a foundation to support it. The difficulty was that it took sooooo many pieces to build a foundation for a sprawling cityscape. So even though we have a 100 piece tile set, we just didn’t have enough to satisfy my kids’ urban engineering blueprints.
Magnetic Tiles Hack
This is where the magnetic tiles hack comes into play! This idea actually originated from my four-year-old when he saw the oil drip pan we purchased for a wall-mounted magnet board in our playroom. I had been planning on nailing the drip pan to the wall when he laid it down and started building on it! Brilliant!
(Eventually, I did mount the board, but because I wanted him to be able to take it down to build on again I came up with a creative wall-mount idea that can easily be removed for building again!)
Supplies for Magnetic Tiles hack
- Magnetic Tiles
- Oil drip pan (We bought ours at Wal-Mart, it’s larger but also more expensive)
- Toy cars (for fun- though not necessary for the hack 😉 )
To use the drip pan as a building base, just lie it on the floor and start building! This is now standard procedure for all Magna-Tile building operations in our house!
Thanks to this hack, my boys have not only enjoyed building more solid skyscrapers, but also cities with streets, trees (the triangular pieces), garages, and more!
*Update* After this idea we came up with a new creative way to play with Magna-Tiles that I think you’ll love- I present Cathedrals in the Clouds (click the photo to read more about it!)
How do your kids enjoy playing with Magnetic Tiles? Share your creative ideas with us on Instagram– we love connecting with like-minded parents there!
Don’t forget to pin this idea on Pinterest!
This is a such a great idea! We learned this from Epic Childhood several years ago. She has lots of other great ideas for play too!
Thank you Kristin! I will have to check out Epic Childhood’s posts (I know they always have great light table ideas!)
Very cool yet simple idea! Your son is a genius 🙂
I am not sure the brand of our magnetic bricks – they do look the same. I found them harder to build with than legos – this should help.
My thanks to you both 🙂
They are definitely harder to build with than Legos (and this base does help tremendously)! Thank you for stopping by the blog today! xo
This is genius! We got our son some for Christmas, so I’ll have to try this!!
Oh your son will love them! And they are really so much fun when you have a god base like this to build on! xo
Thanks for the idea! I can’t believe I have never thought about it. We have had out magnetic tiles for 10 years and they are by far the most played with toy. We have electric tea lights as a hack. They turn them on and put them inside and they glow through the translucent colors. On dark stormy days we shut the curtains and turn of the lights and build in the dark. It is a great distraction for the children who don’t like storms
I absolutely LOVE the tea lights idea!! I am adding that to our must do list now! Thank you for the idea 🙂
What brand are the magnetic tiles? There are so many in Amazon
These are the MagnaTiles brand. However, I’ve also heard good things about Picasso Tiles.
I love adding Jingle Bells to my set at Christmas.
I clicked on the photo to find out about the cathedrals in the sky, but it directs me to this same link. Where can I find out about that idea please?
Sorry about that! Here’s the link:https://playteachrepeat.com/magnetic-tiles-activity/
Using cookie sheets from the dollar store works great too!
I am wondering how you attached it to the wall so that it can be removed and used on the floor? I want to attach one to the wall but if it could have dual uses that would be amazing!