Our son absolutely loves building and creating so when we were asked to review the Connetix Tiles we were thrilled!
We were sent the 120-piece Pastel kit which sells at £103.57 Each pack includes:
8 x Large squares
48 x Small squares
16 x Equilateral triangles
16 x Right angle triangles
16 x Isosceles triangles
8 x Window square pieces
8 x Hollow square pieces (door frames)
Ideas Booklet
A little from our friends at Connetix
Designed to encourage hours of limitless creativity, fun and learning through PLAY, our Pastel Creative Pack features a variety of shapes in 8 pastel colours. It is a great starter option for family play, building BIGGER Connectix creations and expanding the range of colours your children recognise!
Whether playing independently or with friends and family, the 120-piece Pastel Creative Pack encourages STEM learning and the development of fine and gross motor skills. Watch as children create bigger castles and rockets, towers, coin drops, bridges, and mandalas, explore patterns and shapes, create colour sorting boxes, plus so much more. Our Pastel Creative Pack will also support the development of perseverance and resilience as children design larger scale builds, testing the limits of their imagination.
The Design
The box is bright and colourful and engaging for children and on closer inspections the tiles are made using non-toxic ABS plastic that is free from BPA and Phthalate free. Each tile is sealed and riveted for extra safety. Which is good for even the smallest of children who might like to pick these up and pop them in their mouths. Fortunately for us our little builder is past that stage.
The ideas booklet that the set comes with is full of inspiration from animals to Buildings, letters to numbers to geometric designs the possibilities are endless! Mason decided he would go rogue and make his own design whilst I was tasked to make the fish in the inspiration booklet.
The tiles are strong and durable, and the magnets are quite powerful! We have had sets of magnetic tiles before, and the magnets just haven’t cut the mustard with Masons elaborate design, so it was lovely to see that they held up to the high standard he has.
We spent approximately 2 hours creating and designing, then taking to bits and doing it all over again, we really only stopped because it was time for tea and then straight after Mason chose to carry on building rather than go on his screens!!! Now that is a testament to how impressed I am with these tiles. As a parent we try so hard to limit screens so when something comes along that is just effortless then we know it’s a winner!
The tiles are easily stored and also just as easy to put away. In fact, we timed Mason on how long it would take to put the 120 tiles back in the box and it was just under 1 minute!
I can see why the tiles would be good for STEM learning and development of fine and gross motor skills but in my opinion, they are good for so much more, here’s a few I thought of;
build knowledge around scientific and mathematical concepts.
2D and 3D shapes
counting and quantities
properties of materials
experimenting with light
geometry
language
building
cause and effect
stability and weight
cooperation
perseverance
teamwork
self-esteem
cognitive development
Kid View
“I love these! The magnets are strong, so they don’t just fall to pieces when the builds get bigger. I like the fact they are completely see through and don’t have the annoying lines on like the other I have. It would be really great to make a suncatcher from them as the light would shine and make pretty patterns”.
Adult View
At £103.57 they are quite costly but after doing some research they are no more costly than some other magnetic tile companies, in fact if you look at the cost per tile, they work out cheaper (98p per tile for some 85p for Connetix)
After a full weekend of play and no sign of them being banished to a cupboard and never been seen again I think we will get multiple use out of them. They are certainly durable enough.
The good thing about Connetix is that they are compatible with other sets. Mason has a set of Magna-tiles and they fit brilliantly although if we were comparing them for quality and design, I would have to say Connetix just look better.
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